OpenAI to pay Amazon US$38 billion in 7-year cloud services deal
The deal underscores the AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power, pushing Amazon shares to an all-time high
The agreement, announced on Monday, will give OpenAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processors to train and run its artificial intelligence models.
The deal underscores the AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said the start-up is committed to spending US$1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing resources – enough to roughly power 25 million US homes.
The deal is also a major vote of confidence for the e-commerce giant’s cloud unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which some investors feared had fallen behind rivals Microsoft and Google in the AI race. Those fears were somewhat eased by the strong growth the business reported in the September quarter.
Amazon shares hit an all-time high on Monday, with the company set to add nearly US$140 billion to its market value. The stock was last up 5 per cent, following a near-10 per cent jump on Friday. Microsoft shares had briefly dipped on the news.