Amazon Eyes $50 Billion OpenAI Stake

Amazon is discussing investing as much as $50 billion in OpenAI , The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (Jan. 29), citing unnamed sources.

The move that would mark one of the largest single bets yet on the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT and deepen Amazon’s role in the fast-consolidating AI infrastructure race, the report said.

The negotiations are being led by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy , who has been directly involved in talks with OpenAI’s leadership, according to the report. The exact structure of a deal has not been finalized and could still change, but an investment of that size would make Amazon the largest contributor to OpenAI’s current fundraising round.

OpenAI is seeking up to $100 billion in new capital , a financing effort that could value the company at as much as $830 billion, per the report.

SoftBank is separately in discussions to invest up to $30 billion more in OpenAI as part of the same round, adding to its existing stake. The company is also exploring capital from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and venture firms.

For Amazon, the talks underscore a strategy that pairs aggressive spending on AI infrastructure with selective partnerships across the model ecosystem. The company already has exposure to generative AI through Amazon Web Services ( AWS ), its cloud computing unit, and has invested in OpenAI competitor Anthropic , for which Amazon has built an $11 billion data center campus in Indiana. A large OpenAI investment would place Amazon in the unusual position of backing rival model developers at the same time.

The discussions come as Amazon continues to cut costs elsewhere in the business. The company announced another round of corporate layoffs this week, affecting roughly 16,000 employees.

Last week, it was reported that Amazon was set to separately start laying off about 14,000 corporate workers as part of a second round of a broader plan to eliminate 30,000 corporate jobs . The second round follows the first round in October, which involved 14,000 layoffs.

Executives have framed the moves as part of a broader effort to reallocate resources toward long-term priorities, such as artificial intelligence for customer-facing services and internal operations.

Amazon is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings next week, with attention expected to focus on capital spending, cloud growth and how quickly AI investments are translating into revenue. AWS has been a primary beneficiary of enterprise demand for generative AI infrastructure, but rising costs have weighed on margins. Any OpenAI investment would add context to how Amazon is positioning itself ahead of what could be described as a multiyear buildout cycle for AI compute and services.

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