OpenAI has signed a $38 billion multi-year agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), as its first major infrastructure contract with a cloud provider other than Microsoft.
The deal gives OpenAI immediate access to AWS’s extensive compute infrastructure, including hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs, and the option to scale to tens of millions of CPUs through 2026 and potentially beyond.
The agreement allows OpenAI to diversify its cloud computing sources as it develops more advanced AI systems. While Microsoft remains a major partner, this new contract opens up additional capacity and flexibility for OpenAI’s increased needs as the company eyes a potential IPO.
Why It Matters: Ending Microsoft’s exclusive hold on OpenAI’s cloud workloads, this agreement opens the door for greater capacity, pricing options, and resilience. It gives OpenAI more control as it builds the next wave of AI systems and prepares for a public offering.
- Largest Infrastructure Commitment Yet: OpenAI will use AWS EC2 UltraServers powered by NVIDIA’s latest GB200 and GB300 GPUs. These servers are built to handle massive model training and inference tasks. AWS systems are designed to connect large clusters of chips on the same network, reducing delays and improving performance across large-scale AI jobs.
- End of Microsoft Exclusivity Opens New Doors: Until recently, OpenAI relied solely on Microsoft Azure for cloud infrastructure. That exclusivity ended in October 2025, allowing OpenAI to enter agreements with other major cloud vendors. The AWS deal marks the largest of these new arrangements, giving OpenAI more freedom in how and where it builds its models.
- Part of Long-Term Planning for Public Offering: OpenAI’s leadership has openly discussed the need for new funding sources and sees a public listing as a likely outcome. By securing long-term infrastructure deals and reducing dependence on a single partner, OpenAI is putting foundational elements in place to support investor confidence and ensure the supply of compute resources in the coming years.
- Built for Future AI Demands: The infrastructure AWS is providing will support OpenAI’s needs for serving users in real time and for training new models. The deal includes hundreds of thousands of GPUs already available for use, with additional expansion planned through 2026. The design allows OpenAI to adapt its use over time, accommodating future changes in AI workload requirements.
- AWS Expands Role as Key AI Compute Provider: With this agreement, Amazon strengthens its relationship with one of the leading developers in artificial intelligence. The deal is notable because AWS is also a major backer of Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s leading competitors. AWS now supplies compute for several top AI labs, indicating its commitment to becoming a major infrastructure supplier for generative AI technologies.
AWS and OpenAI announce multi-year strategic partnership – Amazon
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