OpenAI Closes Record $110B Round Backed by Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank

OpenAI finalized a $110 billion funding round on February 27, valuing the company at $730 billion and shattering every record for private-company financing. Amazon committed $50 billion, while Nvidia and SoftBank each invested $30 billion.

The deal is not just a corporate milestone. It signals a tectonic shift in where AI infrastructure money is flowing — and what that means for the research institutions, startups, and nonprofits competing for a share of the AI economy.

What the Money Buys

Amazon's investment starts with $15 billion upfront, with the remaining $35 billion contingent on undisclosed conditions. The two companies announced a multi-year strategic partnership deepening OpenAI's use of AWS infrastructure, including Amazon's custom AI chips. OpenAI also committed to using 3 GW of dedicated inference capacity and 2 GW of training on Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems.

This infrastructure buildout will consume the bulk of the capital. OpenAI has framed it as necessary to "scale AI for everyone" — expanding compute capacity to meet surging demand for enterprise and consumer AI products.

The Competitive Landscape for AI Funding

The round lands just two weeks after Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion valuation. Together, the two deals represent $140 billion in private AI investment in February alone — dwarfing the entire annual budget of the National Science Foundation ($8.75 billion) by a factor of sixteen.

For grant-funded researchers, the gap between private AI capital and public research funding has never been wider. Federal programs like NSF's AI initiatives and DOE's $320 million Genesis Mission remain critical pipelines, but they operate at a fundamentally different scale.

What Grant Seekers Should Watch

The AWS partnership creates new pathways for academic and nonprofit AI researchers. Amazon has historically offered cloud credits through programs like AWS Research Credits, and a deeper OpenAI–AWS integration could expand access to frontier compute for institutions that cannot afford it independently.

Grant seekers working in AI safety, alignment, or applied AI should monitor both the corporate partnership programs and the federal response. Congress preserved NSF and DOE science funding in FY2026, but the sheer velocity of private capital is reshaping which institutions set the AI research agenda.

For grant seekers tracking the fast-moving AI funding landscape, in-depth analysis and opportunity matching are available on the Granted blog.