OpenAI signs cloud deal with Amazon worth 54 trillion won

Reducing reliance on Microsoft and diversifying cloud

Already has cloud usage agreements with Oracle and Google

On the 3rd (local time), OpenAI signed a $38 billion (about 54 trillion won) contract with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is interpreted as a signal that OpenAI will no longer rely on the cloud of its largest investor, Microsoft.

According to CNBC on the 3rd (local time), OpenAI signed a contract with Amazon that day to purchase $38 billion worth of cloud service capacity. Under this contract, OpenAI plans to run workloads on AWS infrastructure using hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA chips.

After this news, Amazon's stock jumped about 5% in the U.S. premarket that day.

Amazon said it will initially provide OpenAI with existing AWS data centers under the deal and will later build additional infrastructure for OpenAI.

OpenAI recently announced infrastructure contracts totaling about $1.4 trillion with many companies including NVIDIA, Broadcom, Oracle, Google and South Korea's Samsung Electronics.

Until this year, OpenAI had an exclusive cloud agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft began investing in OpenAI in 2019 and invested a total of $13 billion. In January, Microsoft announced it would not be OpenAI's exclusive cloud supplier and said it would switch to a model of having the right of first refusal on new requests.

Last week, with the preferential status expiring under newly renegotiated commercial terms between Microsoft and OpenAI, OpenAI was able to work more broadly with other cloud companies. Previously, OpenAI had also signed cloud contracts with Oracle and Google.

OpenAI's Sam Altman said, "Scaling frontier AI requires large-scale, reliable compute."

OpenAI also said last week it will make additional purchases of Microsoft's Azure services worth $250 billion over several years.

Amazon has a close relationship with OpenAI's competitor Anthropic. Amazon has invested billions of dollars in Anthropic and is currently building a $11 billion data center campus in Indiana designed exclusively for Anthropic's workloads.

In last week's earnings report, Amazon said AWS revenue grew more than 20% year-on-year, beating analysts' expectations. However, Microsoft and Google saw cloud revenues grow 40% and 34% respectively, outpacing the growth rate of cloud leader Amazon.

The current contract with OpenAI specifies the use of NVIDIA chips, including NVIDIA's Blackwell, but there may also be the possibility of using other chips in the future. Anthropic is using Amazon's custom Trainium chips at Amazon's new facility.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, which has the highest valuation among private companies (about $500 billion as of the end of September), is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO).

Kim Jeong-a, guest reporter kja@hankyung.com