Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2026.
CNBC
Amazon It is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, CNBC confirmed Thursday in a key vote of confidence from a major e-commerce company that invested in one of the startup’s biggest rivals.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy are in direct discussions, said a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because the details are confidential.
Amazon has poured billions of dollars into OpenAI competitor Anthropic since 2023.
The details of Amazon’s talks with OpenAI are still fluid and the final total is subject to change, but a term sheet could be signed in the coming weeks, the people said.
An Amazon representative declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported the $50 billion figure.
OpenAI is also in fundraising talks with other investors, and the round could close at around $100 billion, the people said. As CNBC previously reported, Altman was in the United Arab Emirates last week to participate in investment negotiations with a sovereign wealth fund.
The startup’s funding round begins with investments from strategic companies like Amazon. microsoft and Nvidiasaid the man. Donations from participants such as SoftBank, which is in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI, will also follow, the people said.
The startup was founded in 2015 as a non-profit research institute and exploded into the mainstream in 2022 after introducing the generative chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI has grown to become one of the largest commercial enterprises on the planet, with a valuation of $500 billion in October when it completed a secondary stake sale.
Amazon and OpenAI have been in talks about a potential investment since last year, and as CNBC previously reported, the final deal could include an agreement to use Amazon’s AI chips.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI executives and researchers, including CEO Dario Amodei. The company is best known for its family of AI models called Claude, and earlier this month closed a multibillion-dollar funding round at a valuation of $350 billion.
Amazon Web Services was named Anthropic’s primary cloud provider in 2023 and primary training partner in 2024. The company will continue to fulfill these roles.
Amazon has been cutting costs across its operations to increase investment in AI and rapidly building out data centers.
Amazon announced Wednesday that it will cut about 16,000 corporate employees, the second major layoff since October of last year.
Last October, Amazon opened an $11 billion data center campus in Indiana for Anthropic called Project Rainier.
Amazon announced in the same month that it expected capital spending to reach $125 billion in 2026, the highest spending forecast among mega-cap companies at the time.
WATCH: OpenAI stock will perform ‘excellent’ if it goes public, says Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner
