Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaking to CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2026.
CNBC
Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAICNBC confirmed Thursday, in a major vote of confidence from the e-commerce giant after investing in one of the startup’s biggest rivals.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy have had direct discussions, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.
Amazon has injected billions of dollars into Anthropic, its OpenAI competitor, since 2023.
The details of the negotiations between Amazon and OpenAI are still fluid and the final total is subject to change, but the term sheet could be signed in the coming weeks, the source said.
An Amazon representative declined to comment. THE Wall Street Journal was the first to announce the figure of 50 billion dollars.
OpenAI is also engaging in fundraising discussions with other investors, and the total amount could close at around $100 billion, the source said. Altman was in the United Arab Emirates to participate in investment talks with sovereign wealth funds last week, as CNBC previously reported.
The startup’s financing cycle could close in two parts, starting with investments from strategic companies like Amazon, Microsoft And Nvidiathe person said. Other contributions from participants such as SoftBankwhich is in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI, would follow, the source said.
Read more CNBC tech newsThe startup was founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 and exploded into the mainstream in 2022 after the launch of its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI has become one of the largest commercial entities on the planet and its valuation has soared to 500 billion dollars in October after completing a secondary sale of shares.
Amazon and OpenAI have been in talks about a potential investment since last year, and the final deal could include an agreement on the use of Amazon’s AI chips, as CNBC previously reported.
Anthropic was founded by a group of former OpenAI executives and researchers, including CEO Dario Amodei, in 2021. The company is best known for its family of AI models called Claude, and it farm a multibillion-dollar funding round at a valuation of $350 billion earlier this month.
Amazon Web Services was named Anthropic’s leading cloud provider in 2023 and its main training partner in 2024. It continues to fulfill both roles.
Amazon has been cutting costs across its business to invest more in AI and rapidly building data centers.
On Wednesday, Amazon announced it would cut about 16,000 jobs employeesmarking its second round of massive job cuts since last October.
Last OctoberAmazon has opened an $11 billion data center campus for Anthropic in Indiana called Project Rainier.
Amazon said the same month that it expects its capital spending to reach $125 billion for 2026, the highest spending forecast among the mega-cap companies of the time.
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