OpenAI and AWS strike multiyear $38 billion AI compute deal

OpenAI and Amazon announced on Monday a multiyear, $38 billion agreement under which the maker of ChatGPT will use Amazon Web Services to train and run its most advanced artificial intelligence models. The deal, spanning seven years, gives OpenAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units and will see AWS capacity brought online through the end of 2026, with the ability to expand into 2027 and beyond, company statements said.

Under the agreement OpenAI will begin using AWS compute immediately, Amazon said. The arrangement follows a corporate restructuring at OpenAI last week that removed prior restrictions on where the company could buy cloud services and altered its relationship with Microsoft, which had been OpenAI’s principal cloud partner. Regulators in California and Delaware recently approved a new business structure for OpenAI that is intended to make it easier for the company to raise capital and pursue profit-generating activities.

OpenAI co-chief executive Sam Altman described the partnership as a response to the scale of compute required to develop frontier AI, saying scaling such systems requires “massive and reliable compute resources.”...