OpenAI-AWS: The $38 billion bet on multi-cloud AI
OPENAIAWS OpenAI signed a 7-year, $38 billion cloud deal with Amazon Web Services, marking one of the largest cloud commitments in history. This partnership includes expanded use of AWS's Trainium and Inferentia chips for training and inference workloads.
The deal underscores OpenAI's strategic shift toward multi-cloud strategies amid growing compute demands. Rather than relying solely on Microsoft's Azure infrastructure, OpenAI is diversifying its infrastructure footprint to ensure reliability and scale for its rapidly expanding user base, which recently hit 1 million business users—the fastest adoption ever.
AWS's custom silicon plays a central role. Trainium chips for training and Inferentia for inference offer cost advantages over traditional Nvidia GPUs, potentially reducing OpenAI's compute expenses while maintaining performance. This represents a significant validation of AWS's AI chip strategy and could accelerate adoption across the industry.