Amazon and OpenAI on the brink of a multi-billion-dollar partnership

Amazon and OpenAI are negotiating a significantly closer collaboration in the field of artificial intelligence. At the center of the talks is a possible investment of more than ten billion US dollars by the US group in the AI company. In return, OpenAI could increasingly rely on chips and computing capacity from Amazon in the future. The negotiations have been ongoing since October and are still at an early stage. Several media outlets have reported consistently on the talks.

For Amazon, such a deal would be of considerable strategic importance. Although the group, through Amazon Web Services, is the world’s largest provider of cloud services, Amazon has only been active in the field of AI semiconductors for a few years. The market for specialized AI chips is currently clearly dominated by Nvidia, which holds a market share of up to 90 percent. With the development of its own processors, in particular the Trainium chips, Amazon is seeking to reduce this dependency.

So far, the Trainium chips have mainly been used in Amazon’s own data centers as well as by the AI company Anthropic. The aim is to make AWS more attractive to AI firms that want to train and operate their models there. Competitive pressure is high, as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have recently gained market share. Microsoft also holds a 27 percent stake in OpenAI, while Google is developing its own AI models and its own chips.

For OpenAI, the talks would come at a time when the company is seeking to reduce its dependence on Microsoft. However, the software group continues to hold exclusive rights to the most advanced models. A potential agreement with Amazon would not change this. Nevertheless, by using Amazon chips, OpenAI could broaden its technological base.

An investment by Amazon could push OpenAI’s valuation to more than 500 billion US dollars. Previously, the two companies had already concluded an agreement under which OpenAI rents server capacity from Amazon, although these systems have so far been operated with Nvidia chips. In parallel, OpenAI has signed long-term supply contracts with several chip and infrastructure providers.

The increasing interdependence of major technology companies is being met with skepticism by some investors. In view of billion-dollar commitments for data centers, chips, and cloud services, concerns are growing about a possible overheating of the AI market. In addition, Amazon and OpenAI are also discussing a commercial collaboration in the area of online retail in order to tap into new sources of revenue.