OpenAI Raises $110B from Amazon, Nvidia and Softbank; Microsoft is “Excited”
Anthropic has eaten into B2B market shares, while Google (incidentally an Anthropic shareholder) is grabbing more and more market share in the B2C sector with Gemini: OpenAI, which was the undisputed market leader for a long time after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, has come under considerable pressure in 2025. Most painful: GPT models are no longer at the top of any ranking, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and China’s open-source startups have caught up massively.
All the more reason fresh capital is needed to make progress on the many open fronts (infrastructure, chips, AI models, B2B, B2C, advertising business, etc.). OpenAI has now completed the largest funding round in the history of the technology industry. The company announced that it is raising 110 billion dollars in new investments at a pre-money valuation of 730 billion dollars. The round is led by three major technology companies, with additional investors expected to join in the course of the process. Post-money valuation is thus 840 billion dollars. This would make OpenAI one of the 15 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.
The investors and their contributions
The funding round consists of three main investors:
- SoftBank with 30 billion dollars
- NVIDIA with 30 billion dollars
- Amazon with 50 billion dollars
In addition to financial investments, OpenAI announced strategic partnerships with Amazon and NVIDIA. An agreement was reached with NVIDIA for 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts of training on Vera Rubin systems. This complements already ongoing Hopper and Blackwell systems at Microsoft, OCI, and CoreWeave.
Amazon as new strategic partner
The partnership with Amazon was announced as a multi-year strategic collaboration aimed at accelerating AI innovations for enterprises, startups, and end consumers worldwide. Amazon thus becomes an important new partner in the OpenAI ecosystem (more on the Amazon deal here).
Microsoft’s position as existing major investor
Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner since 2019, published a detailed statement on the new funding round. The company emphasized that the announcements do not change the existing agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI. This is because Amazon, a major cloud competitor to Microsoft’s Azure division, is now also on the cap table of the ChatGPT maker.
“Microsoft maintains its exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products. Collaborations like the partnership between OpenAI and Amazon were always contemplated under our agreements and Microsoft is excited to see what they build together”, reads a statement of Microsoft and OpenAI.
Key points of the Microsoft statement
| Area | Status |
|---|---|
| Partnership | Remains strong and central |
| IP rights | Exclusive license for Microsoft unchanged |
| Revenue share | Existing agreement remains unchanged |
| Cloud provider (stateless APIs) | Azure remains exclusive provider |
| Hosting first-party products | Continues on Azure |
Microsoft made clear that all stateless API calls to OpenAI models resulting from a collaboration between OpenAI and third parties (including Amazon) are hosted on Azure. Microsoft’s revenue share includes revenue from partnerships between OpenAI and other cloud providers, which was provided for in the agreements from the outset.
“The partnership was designed so that Microsoft and OpenAI have room to independently pursue new opportunities while continuing to work together, which both companies do, together and independently.”
Growth and user numbers
OpenAI released current user figures that underscore the company’s strong growth. ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, with over 50 million paying private customers. More than 9 million paying business customers use ChatGPT for their work.
The developer tool Codex has more than tripled its weekly user numbers since the beginning of the year and now reaches 1.6 million users. According to OpenAI, January and February 2025 are on track to be the strongest months for new subscribers in the company’s history.
Impact on the OpenAI Foundation
The new valuation increases the value of the OpenAI Foundation’s stake in OpenAI Group to over 180 billion dollars. This further strengthens the nonprofit foundation and expands its capacity to fund philanthropic projects in areas such as health breakthroughs and AI resilience.
