OpenAI & AWS US$38bn Deal Drives the Next Frontier of AI

AI leader OpenAI has signed a US$38bn partnership with AWS granting the ChatGPT creator extensive access to AWS’ global cloud infrastructure.

Amazon EC2 UltraServers, powered by hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, will now handle OpenAI’s core AI workloads with scalability reaching tens of millions of CPUs.

With AWS operating some of the largest AI infrastructure clusters, exceeding 500,000 chips, the platform will support everything from ChatGPT inference to the training of next-generation models, ensuring low-latency performance across tightly integrated systems.

Following its historic restructuring, OpenAI is no longer tied to Microsoft as its exclusive cloud partner, enabling the seven-year collaboration with AWS to move forward strategically.

“Scaling frontier AI requires massive, reliable compute," says OpenAI Co-Founder and CEO Sam Altman. 

“Our partnership with AWS strengthens the broad compute ecosystem that will power this next era and bring advanced AI to everyone.”

Why OpenAI turns to AWS for massive compute muscle

The partnership between OpenAI and AWS brings the two companies closer together and positions them ahead of Anthropic, which has received a US$8bn investment from AWS.

Earlier this year, OpenAI’s open-weight models were introduced on Amazon Bedrock, drawing thousands of users who now leverage them for coding, scientific research, and mathematical problem-solving within the AWS ecosystem.

“As OpenAI continues to push the boundaries of what's possible, AWS's best-in-class infrastructure will serve as a backbone for their AI ambitions,” says Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. 

“The breadth and immediate availability of optimised compute demonstrates why AWS is uniquely positioned to support OpenAI's vast AI workloads.”

An age of multi-cloud partnerships

The new agreement with AWS reflects a broader trend of infrastructure diversification among frontier AI developers.

Earlier, OpenAI committed to gradually purchasing US$250bn worth of Microsoft Azure services.

The company has also partnered with CoreWeave, a specialised cloud provider, in contracts valued at approximately US$22.4bn to support training for its AI models.

This latest AWS collaboration further advances OpenAI’s multi-cloud, multi-supplier compute strategy, aimed at reducing reliance on a single vendor – a shift enabled by the company’s transition to a PBC structure.

As competition to develop larger and more advanced models accelerates, access to compute has emerged as the key differentiator.

OpenAI’s latest partnership with AWS represents more than a supplier agreement – it signals a structural transformation in how frontier AI is developed and deployed.

The move highlights a shift away from single-cloud dominance toward a more distributed and collaborative approach to scaling.