OpenAI Signs Landmark $38 Billion Cloud Deal With Amazon Web Services
OpenAI agrees to purchase $38 billion in computing capacity from Amazon Web Services, marking a major shift away from its former reliance on Microsoft. The massive partnership drives Amazon stock to a record closing high.
OpenAI signs a massive $38 billion deal to buy computing capacity from Amazon Web Services, marking its first contract with the leading cloud infrastructure provider. This agreement signals that the $500 billion artificial intelligence startup is no longer exclusively reliant on Microsoft for its computing needs. Under the new deal, OpenAI immediately begins running workloads on AWS infrastructure, tapping into hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units located in the United States.
The partnership drives Amazon stock up 4% to a record closing high, giving the e-commerce giant its best two-day trading period since November 2022. The first phase of the deal utilizes existing AWS data centers, but Amazon eventually plans to build out additional, separate infrastructure specifically dedicated to OpenAI's growing demands. An AWS vice president confirms that some of this dedicated capacity is already online and actively in use by OpenAI.
This contract is part of a broader dealmaking spree by OpenAI, which recently announces roughly $1.4 trillion worth of buildout agreements with various tech giants including Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, and Google. Until this year, OpenAI maintains an exclusive cloud agreement with Microsoft, which invested a total of $13 billion into the startup. However, Microsoft's preferential status officially expires last week, freeing OpenAI to partner more widely with other hyperscalers like the market-leading AWS.