Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank pour $110 billion into OpenAI - raising the stakes for AI monetization

By William Gavin

OpenAI's new $730 billion valuation is more than double what it was a year ago, but the company's financials pale in comparison with those of public peers

OpenAI has developed a close relationship with SoftBank, a Japanese investment bank.

OpenAI just raked in $110 billion through a funding round that values it at $730 billion - but the ChatGPT maker must spend heavily to grow into that valuation.

SoftBank (JP:9984) and Nvidia (NVDA) each chipped in $30 billion for the funding round, while e-commerce giant Amazon.com (AMZN) invested $50 billion. Additional investors are expected to join the fundraising round down the road, OpenAI said.

The new valuation marks a dramatic increase from the $500 billion that OpenAI was valued at about four months ago. And less than a year ago, in March 2025, OpenAI was worth $300 billion, less than half its current valuation.

The important thing now will be for OpenAI to improve monetization. The company disclosed in January that it had more than $20 billion in annual recurring revenue during 2025, up from $6 billion in 2024. But the latest performance pales in comparison to similarly sized public peers. JPMorgan Chase (JPM), with an $802 billion market capitalization, had $182 billion in revenue in 2025, while Exxon Mobil (XOM), which is valued at $614 billion, had $324 billion in annual sales, without including items like income from equity affiliates.

More than 9 million business customers now pay to use ChatGPT, while more than 50 million consumers have enrolled in a subscription plan, according to OpenAI. The company said some 900 million consumers actively use ChatGPT each week. Codex, a coding agent, has 1.6 million weekly users, according to OpenAI.

"We are entering a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale," OpenAI said in a statement. "Leadership will be defined by who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand, and turn that capacity into products people rely on."

OpenAI said it would expand its relationship with Nvidia to include using 3 gigawatts "of dedicated inference capacity and 2 GW of training on Vera Rubin systems." This will help the company train and deploy AI models and thus attract more business.

The fundraise also deepens Amazon's relationship with OpenAI, which in November committed $38 billion to gain access to Amazon Web Services' infrastructure. The companies said Friday they would extend that deal by $100 billion over an eight-year period.

AWS will also become the exclusive third-party cloud distributer for OpenAI Frontier, an enterprise platform, while OpenAI will help develop custom models for Amazon. Only $15 billion of Amazon's announced investment will be provided immediately. The rest will be invested once "certain conditions" are met, according to the release.

Read: Why Nvidia is 'highly motivated' to keep investing in OpenAI

OpenAI seemingly expected investors to be concerned that its deal with Amazon hinted at tensions with Microsoft (MSFT), which has been a major partner. The companies published a lengthy joint statement on Friday reiterating that their relationship "remains unchanged."

"Collaborations like the partnership between OpenAI and Amazon were always contemplated under our agreements and Microsoft is excited to see what they build together," the companies said.

Read: OpenAI reportedly eyeing an IPO by year's end, ahead of Anthropic

The chatbot race remains heated. Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) said recently that its Gemini chatbot had surpassed 750 million monthly active users. Elon Musk's xAI said in January that it reaches 600 monthly active users with its Grok, while Meta Platforms (META) has 1 billion monthly active users for Meta AI.

OpenAI's fundraise comes just a few weeks after rival artificial-intelligence lab Anthropic announced a $380 billion post-money valuation after raising $30 billion from investors, including Microsoft and Nvidia. In January, xAI said it raised $20 billion from investors. It was recently officially acquired by SpaceX.

OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX are each reportedly considering plans for a public listing that could come as soon as this year. The companies have reportedly been bleeding money as they rush to develop newer, better models.

-William Gavin

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-27-26 1032ET