Amazon has completed its $50 billion investment in OpenAI, accelerating a deal that ties one of the world’s largest cloud companies more closely to the developer of ChatGPT.
The payment was confirmed in Amazon’s latest filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company invested $15 billion in OpenAI during the first quarter of 2026, followed by another $13.7 billion in the second quarter. After June 30, Amazon transferred the remaining $21.3 billion, bringing the total investment to $50 billion.
When the partnership was announced in February, Amazon said the final $35 billion would be invested once certain conditions were met. These included an OpenAI initial public offering or a major technological breakthrough.
Amazon has now completed the investment without waiting for those milestones, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper estimates that the deal gives Amazon a stake of approximately 5 percent in OpenAI, although the company has declined to confirm its ownership level.
A deal built around AWS and Trainium
The investment is only one part of a much larger commercial agreement between Amazon and OpenAI.
The companies have expanded an existing cloud computing contract by another $100 billion over eight years. Under the agreement, OpenAI has committed to using approximately two gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon’s Trainium artificial intelligence chips.
Trainium was developed by Amazon as an alternative to the Nvidia processors that currently dominate the AI infrastructure market. Securing OpenAI as a major customer could help Amazon increase the adoption of its own chips while reducing AWS’s dependence on external hardware suppliers.
OpenAI’s models and services are also expected to become more deeply integrated with Amazon’s cloud business. The companies plan to develop customized models for Amazon products and provide OpenAI tools to corporate customers through AWS.
The structure allows Amazon to benefit from the partnership in several ways. It owns preferred shares in OpenAI, earns revenue by supplying the company with computing infrastructure and gains a major customer for Trainium.
The investment therefore represents more than a financial bet on OpenAI’s future value. It is also an attempt to secure a larger role in the infrastructure required to train and operate advanced AI systems.
Amazon continues to back Anthropic
Amazon is pursuing a similar strategy with Anthropic, the company behind the Claude family of AI models.
Between 2023 and the end of 2025, Amazon invested $8 billion in Anthropic. It added another $10 billion during the second quarter of 2026, bringing the total amount invested to $18 billion.
Amazon has also created a financing facility that could provide Anthropic with an additional $15 billion, depending on the delivery of computing capacity and other conditions.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have signed large, long-term agreements to use AWS infrastructure and Amazon-designed chips. Supporting two competing AI laboratories reduces Amazon’s reliance on a single model developer while allowing AWS to offer customers a wider selection of AI systems.
Amazon’s larger AI strategy
The scale of the OpenAI investment reflects how quickly competition in artificial intelligence has moved beyond model development.
Technology companies are now competing to control the data centres, chips and cloud platforms needed to run those models. Nvidia leads the AI processor market, while Google has developed its own TPU technology and Microsoft maintains a substantial relationship with OpenAI.
Amazon’s approach combines investment capital with cloud contracts and proprietary hardware. The company is not only financing leading AI developers; it is positioning AWS and Trainium as essential infrastructure for their expansion.
Completing the $50 billion OpenAI investment ahead of the original milestones shows how aggressively Amazon is pursuing that strategy—and how valuable access to the largest AI developers has become.