By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has received $110 billion in funding from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia, putting the technology company’s pre-money valuation at $730 billion.
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Amazon is leading the trio of tech heavyweights in commitments, putting up $50 billion, followed by $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, said OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Other investors are anticipated to join as the funding round progresses.
Amazon will start with an initial $15 billion investment and will invest an additional $35 billion in the coming months under preset conditions.
“These partnerships expand our global reach, deepen our infrastructure, and strengthen our balance sheet so we can bring frontier AI to more people, more businesses, and more communities worldwide,” he wrote.
Altman said that ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, and more than 50 million consumer subscribers.
“We are entering a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale,” he said. “Leadership will be defined by who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand, and turn that capacity into products people rely on. This funding and these partnerships let us do both, and move faster on our mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.”
OpenAI and Amazon’s multiyear partnership will include bringing new advanced AI capabilities to enterprises and having Amazon Web Services serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier. OpenAI and AWS will expand their current $38 billion multiyear deal by $100 billion over eight years. The companies will partner on developing customized models available to Amazon developers to power Amazon’s customer-facing applications.
OpenAI said it is also expanding its partnership with Nvidia.
OpenAI and Microsoft have had a partnership since 2019. OpenAI said in a statement that nothing about the funding or new partners announced Friday “in any way changes the terms” of its relationship with Microsoft.
“The partnership remains strong and central,” OpenAI said.
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