OpenAI: AI deals, investors and valuation

According to The Information, OpenAI plans to purchase (not just rent) Google TPUs; no contract confirmed.

SB Energy builds, owns and operates the PORTS-Pike campus with 4.25 GW initially (8 GW with option) on Nvidia compute only, under a 20-year lease to OpenAI.

OpenAI plans a $20 billion campus in Effingham County, Georgia, with at least 3.2 GW supplied by Georgia Power between 2028 and 2032; OpenAI pays the grid costs. The same day the WSJ reports infrastructure spending of $750 billion through 2030.

According to CNBC and the FT, OpenAI is discussing ceding about 5% to the US government before its IPO, in a vehicle similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund. It is not a payment: it involves transferring equity, with terms unclear.

TPG, with Advent, Bain Capital and Brookfield, invests over $4 billion in the new consulting/deployment unit DeployCo ($10 billion pre-money, $14 billion post-money per Axios).

Azure remains the primary cloud but OpenAI can sell all its products on any cloud; Microsoft's license through 2032 becomes non-exclusive. Microsoft stops paying revenue share, while OpenAI continues paying it through 2030 with a cap.

Microsoft joins the additional tranche of the round closed at an $852 billion post-money valuation; its contribution was not disclosed.

According to industry sources, Samsung will be the only HBM4 supplier for Titan, OpenAI's first chip, designed with Broadcom and manufactured by TSMC.

Oracle and OpenAI drop the 600 MW expansion of the Abilene site (Texas) after lengthy financing talks; Oracle says the overall 4.5 GW plan is still on track.

Agreement with the Department of Defense to use OpenAI models on classified networks. Amount not disclosed.

Amazon leads the $110 billion round ($730 billion pre-money) with $50 billion: $15 billion upfront and $35 billion conditional. Completed per the SEC filing of 31/07/2026; AWS becomes the exclusive third-party cloud for the Frontier platform.

The $38 billion AWS contract grows by $100 billion over eight years; OpenAI commits to use at least 2 GW of Trainium chips and brings its models to Bedrock.

$30 billion equity investment in the $110 billion round, replacing the $100 billion letter of intent of September 2025.

Alongside the investment, OpenAI commits to 3 GW of dedicated inference capacity and 2 GW of training on Vera Rubin systems.

SoftBank co-leads the $110 billion round at $730 billion pre-money with an additional $30 billion.

OpenAI becomes the first customer of Tata Consultancy Services' HyperVault data center business with 100 MW, up to 1 GW in future; TCS adopts ChatGPT Enterprise.

On top of the compute contract (later revalued at over $20 billion), OpenAI gives Cerebras a $1 billion loan for working capital (exact date in January unknown).

OpenAI buys up to 750 MW of inference compute from Cerebras over three years, hosted in Cerebras data centers; value over $10 billion according to sources.

Disney takes a $1 billion stake (plus warrants) and licenses over 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters for Sora and ChatGPT Images for three years.

OpenAI and NextDC signed an MOU for a 550 MW AI campus at Eastern Creek, Sydney, worth about A$7B with OpenAI as anchor - its first OpenAI for Countries project in APAC.

OpenAI and Foxconn will co-design several generations of data-center racks built in the US; OpenAI gets early access and an option to buy. Foxconn already makes Stargate gear in Lordstown, Ohio.

First major contract with AWS: $38 billion over seven years for hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs (GB200/GB300) on EC2 UltraServers.

In the October 2025 recapitalization OpenAI commits to purchase an additional $250 billion of Azure services; Microsoft loses its right of first refusal on compute.

OpenAI becomes a public benefit corporation; Microsoft holds about 27% on a diluted basis (worth ~$135 billion at the time), with IP rights to models and products through 2032.

Co-development and deployment of 10 GW of OpenAI-designed accelerators with Broadcom Ethernet racks and networking, from 2H 2026 to end-2029. The first chip, 'Jalapeño' for inference, was unveiled in June 2026.

Multi-year deal for 6 GW of AMD Instinct GPUs, starting with 1 GW of MI450 in the second half of 2026. Value not disclosed (tens of billions according to AMD).

Warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares at $0.01, vesting in tranches tied to installed GW and price thresholds (the last at $600); exercisable until 05/10/2030.

More than 600 current and former employees sell $6.6 billion of shares to investors (Thrive, SoftBank, Dragoneer, MGX, T. Rowe Price) at a $500 billion valuation; the money goes to the employees, not the company.

Letter of intent for DRAM/HBM supplies to Stargate: together with SK Hynix up to 900,000 DRAM wafers a month.

Letter of intent for HBM/DRAM memory supplies to Stargate; joint target with Samsung of up to 900,000 wafers a month.

Third expansion of up to $6.5 billion for training next-generation models; total contract value rises to about $22.4 billion.

SAP and OpenAI announced 'OpenAI for Germany' for the German public sector on SAP's Azure-based Delos Cloud, launching 2026; SAP is expanding it to 4,000 GPUs.

Letter of intent: Nvidia would have invested up to $100 billion as OpenAI deployed 10 GW of Nvidia systems. Never formalized; in February 2026 replaced by a $30 billion equity investment.

Hardware part of the letter of intent: at least 10 GW of Nvidia systems (Vera Rubin platform, first GW in 2H 2026). Scaled back in February 2026 to commitments of 3 GW + 2 GW.

OpenAI is exploring offtake of up to 8,000 Nvidia GPUs in the UK (scalable to 31,000) at Nscale sites, under the US-UK technology pact.

Contract worth about $300 billion over ~5 years (from 2027) for 4.5 GW of Stargate capacity, following the 4.5 GW deal of July 2025.

Acquisition of product experimentation platform Statsig for $1.1 billion in stock; founder Vijaye Raji becomes CTO of Applications.

Data center in Narvik (Nscale-Aker JV) with 230 MW initially and 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by end-2026; OpenAI is the main customer (offtaker).

The roughly $3 billion deal to buy Windsurf expired; Google hired the CEO and licensed the technology (~$2.4 billion), the rest went to Cognition.

OpenAI adds Google Cloud among its compute providers and begins renting Google TPUs for its products. Amount not disclosed.

Full acquisition of io (AI devices) for about $6.5 billion, the largest in OpenAI's history; Jony Ive leads design. Closed on 09/07/2025.

Second expansion of the CoreWeave contract, up to $4 billion (May 2025).

SoftBank (via Vision Fund 2) commits up to $30 billion of the $40 billion round at a $300 billion post-money valuation; second closing of $22.5 billion completed on 26/12/2025, ~11% stake.

Five-year, $11.9 billion contract for CoreWeave GPU capacity, signed shortly before CoreWeave's IPO.

SoftBank commits to spend $3 billion a year to use OpenAI solutions across its companies; the SB OpenAI Japan JV is created to sell 'Crystal Intelligence' to Japanese businesses.

OpenAI commits about $19 billion to the Stargate JV (~40% stake) and has operational responsibility for it, according to The Information.

In late 2024 OpenAI bought a 23% stake in io, Jony Ive's hardware startup, for about $1.5 billion, ahead of the full acquisition.

$6.6 billion round at a $157 billion post-money valuation, led by Thrive Capital with Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank among participants.

Microsoft's cumulative investments in OpenAI from 2019 to 2023 (including the multibillion-dollar tranche of January 2023), largely in the form of Azure credits.