OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation (techcrunch.com)

OpenAI has successfully raised $110 billion in a landmark funding round, establishing a staggering pre-money valuation of $730 billion. Key contributions include $50 billion from Amazon, along with $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank. This funding marks a significant shift as OpenAI moves towards embedding frontier AI technologies into everyday applications on a global scale, highlighting the need for robust infrastructure capable of supporting such demand. The company anticipates further investments as this funding round remains open. The investment will foster collaborations with Amazon and Nvidia, focusing on scalable infrastructure development. OpenAI plans to launch a new “stateful runtime environment” on Amazon’s Bedrock platform, which could revolutionize how developers create AI applications. As part of their agreement, OpenAI commits to a substantial $100 billion expansion of its AWS partnership, necessitating at least 2GW of AWS Trainium compute for future developments. Although details on Nvidia's involvement are less specific, OpenAI has pledged significant inference and training capabilities, which will be crucial in driving the next wave of advancements in AI technologies.