Privately held artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI is reported to be in discussions with technology giant Amazon (AMZN) about a potential investment of $10 billion U.S. or more.
The agreement would also include the use of Amazon’s proprietary A.I. microchips.
The discussions, which are ongoing, comes after OpenAI completed a restructuring in October of this year.
OpenAI has also formally outlined the details of its continued partnership with Microsoft (MSFT), giving it more freedom to raise capital and partner with other companies such as Amazon.
Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion U.S. in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019. But Microsoft no longer has a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider.
Amazon has invested at least $8 billion U.S. into OpenAI’s main rival Anthropic, but the e-commerce giant could be looking to expand its exposure to the A.I. market.
Microsoft has taken a similar step and announced last month that it will invest up to $5 billion U.S. into Anthropic, and Nvidia (NVDA) will invest up to $10 billion U.S. in the A.I. start-up.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing unit, has been designing its own microchips since 2015.
Those chips are critically important for A.I. companies that are trying to train models and meet growing demand for computing power.
Amazon announced the latest generation of its Trainium microchips earlier this month.
OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion U.S. of infrastructure commitments in recent months, including agreements with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Broadcom (AVGO).
Last month, OpenAI signed a deal to buy $38 billion U.S. worth of computing capacity from Amazon Web Services, its first contract with the cloud leader.
In October, OpenAI finalized a secondary share sale that valued the start-up at $500 billion U.S.
AMZN stock is up 1% this year and trading at $222.56 U.S. per share.
