On January 29, 2026, NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft are brewing an investment plan of up to $60 billion for OpenAI, attempting to secure the most critical chips in the next stage of the general artificial intelligence race. According to the leaked proposal, Microsoft plans to invest less than $10 billion, Amazon will contribute over $10 billion, while NVIDIA intends to spend up to about $30 billion, corresponding to OpenAI's target valuation of approximately $730 billion. This is not only an unprecedented single-round financing game but also a deep-water gamble about who bets the most, who is most dependent on OpenAI, and who can control pricing power in the future AI landscape.
Single Round of $60 Billion: AI Financing Scale Completely Rewritten
● Record-level scale: According to Golden Finance, this $60 billion deal, once finalized, will "set a new record for single-round financing in the AI field." Compared to the previous financing pace of AI star companies, even top large model companies and autonomous driving unicorns have accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars over multiple rounds. Now, OpenAI is attempting to raise $60 billion in one go, directly elevating the industry's financing benchmark to a whole new height.
● Impact of a $730 billion valuation: According to a single-source report cited by TechFlow, the target valuation for OpenAI in this round of negotiations is set at approximately $730 billion. This figure not only far exceeds the current valuation ceiling of all AI startups but is also close to the market value level of some business lines of global top tech giants, indicating that the market is willing to price an AI company still in the process of validating its business model at the expectation of a "quasi-super platform," leaving a large growth premium space.
● Prepaid AI future: Behind such a high valuation, the market is almost prepaying for future returns related to general artificial intelligence, computing power monopoly, and data barriers. Investors are betting on OpenAI's potential to achieve a "winner-takes-all" position in the three fronts of large model standards, inference and training computing power needs, and closed data and user ecosystems; yet all of this has not fully materialized but has already been pre-converted into hundreds of billions of dollars in book value at the capital level.
NVIDIA's $30 Billion Bet: From Selling Shovels to Betting on Gold Mines
● Nearly half of the aggressive stance: In this proposed investment structure, NVIDIA plans to invest up to about $30 billion, close to half of the total scale of $60 billion, which far exceeds the expectations of many institutions. Considering that NVIDIA has accumulated a massive cash flow from AI GPU sales over the past two years, it has the capital to directly stand on the shareholder list of the top AI application party by "exchanging cash for control," converting its cash advantage on financial reports into long-term strategic chips.
● Transitioning from selling shovels to colluding on gold mines: Over the past two years, NVIDIA has mostly appeared as a "shovel seller," being the computing power supplier for almost all large model companies. Now, choosing to deeply bind with OpenAI, the top application party, means it is no longer satisfied with just being an upstream supplier but hopes to achieve deeper integration in model capability evolution, inference architecture design, and even software stack ecology, upgrading itself from a "replaceable hardware supplier" to an "indispensable ecological partner."
● Bargaining power and risks coexist: With its strong position in upstream hardware, if NVIDIA becomes an important investor in OpenAI, it is expected to further consolidate its voice in AI computing power standards, pricing systems, and integrated hardware-software solutions. However, at the same time, a large bet on a single top player also amplifies concentration risk: if future regulations, technological routes, or business models undergo drastic changes, NVIDIA may face dual impacts of valuation fluctuations on the capital side as well as pressure on chip sales.
Microsoft Continues to Increase Investment: Calculations After Allies Become Shareholders
● From a billion-dollar old shareholder to relative restraint: Microsoft is one of OpenAI's earliest and most steadfast backers, having previously invested billion-dollar scale in multiple rounds of transactions and secured first-hand dividends through exclusive cloud cooperation and deep product integration. In this round of negotiations, Microsoft is reported to plan to invest less than $10 billion, which appears relatively restrained compared to its earlier "unrestrained" financial boldness, more like a structural adjustment based on an already heavy investment rather than taking on the absolute lead again.
● Finding balance between cloud, distribution, and equity: As an existing deep cooperation partner, Microsoft and OpenAI are already bound in Azure cloud services, exclusive model distribution rights, and deep product integration. The new round of investment is more about fine-tuning equity relations to adapt to a multi-party holding situation while maintaining the moat of its cloud business: ensuring that key models land in its own ecosystem first while leaving room for OpenAI to introduce more partners to jointly expand commercialization scenarios, avoiding passive limitations due to exclusivity.
● Change in mindset of no longer being the "largest backer": In this round of capital games, Microsoft does not seem eager to maintain the position of "investing the most," a change driven by multiple considerations: on one hand, facing the ongoing scrutiny of regulation and antitrust, it needs to maintain restraint in public posture to avoid being seen as exerting excessive control over a single AI company; on the other hand, under pressure for financial stability and shareholder returns, Microsoft must find a new balance between reliance on OpenAI and moderate checks on it, rather than continuing to exchange unlimited capital input for diminishing marginal control.
Amazon Breaks Through with $10 Billion: AWS's AI Catch-Up Battle
● Over $10 billion contrasting move: According to reports, Amazon plans to invest over $10 billion in OpenAI. This sharply contrasts with the long-standing impression of it being relatively "behind" in the generative AI field—previously, market discussions about large models and generative AI focused more on the OpenAI-Microsoft combination and Google's self-research route, with limited attention on Amazon. Now, a $10 billion bet clearly indicates AWS's proactive reshaping of its AI image.
● Filling AWS's model and integration gaps: Although AWS remains strong in the IaaS layer of cloud computing, it has significant shortcomings in large model supply, self-developed general model branding, and end-to-end integration solutions. By investing in OpenAI, it has the opportunity to directly integrate one of the world's most brand-effective large models into its enterprise solutions, shortening the gap in model layers and developer mindsets, using capital to buy time and equity to exchange for ecological synergy.
● Using OpenAI to tear open the AI service battlefield: In the cloud computing battle with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, AI services have become a new high ground. If Amazon can deeply embed OpenAI's capabilities into AWS's product matrix, it is expected to reshape the perception of "who is the first choice for AI cloud" in enterprise customer decisions. For large customers already using AWS, once they can seamlessly access OpenAI models on the existing architecture, the migration costs and trial-and-error thresholds will be significantly reduced, greatly enhancing Amazon's chips in the next round of cloud service competition.
The Three Giants Betting Together: A Tangle of Cooperation and Hostility
● A rare complex relationship network: NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Amazon are already mutually dependent yet competing in the AI industry chain: Microsoft and Amazon are major customers of computing power, NVIDIA is a core supplier, and all three are competitors in cloud and platform ecosystems, yet they are rarely seen together in OpenAI's equity. This "betting at the same table" scenario places OpenAI at the crossroads of industrial power, transforming this deal beyond traditional financial investment into a collective action rewriting the landscape of industrial collaboration and competition.
● Constraints and pulls under multi-party holding: When the three giants simultaneously become shareholders of OpenAI, it will inevitably face more complex games in technical route selection, resource priority allocation, and commercialization channel bias. No party wants OpenAI to completely lean towards a competitor's cloud or ecosystem, nor do they wish to see key capabilities monopolized; this inherent tension will manifest through board seats, cooperation agreements, and resource biases, exerting long-term influence on OpenAI's governance structure and decision-making pace.
● Concerns about further solidifying monopoly patterns: An unprecedented joint bet is likely to further consolidate the control of leading tech giants over the three key aspects of computing power, models, and distribution channels. For the industry, this "grouping to lock core assets" approach can accelerate the large-scale construction of AI infrastructure but may also inadvertently raise the entry barriers for newcomers, making it more difficult for small and medium-sized companies to face higher costs in computing power procurement, model authorization, and user reach, thus making the trend of rising industry concentration even harder to reverse.
AI Tickets Sold Out: Positioning and Strategies of Latecomers
The $60 billion investment and $730 billion valuation have further amplified the already rapidly accelerating pace of the AI industry: the giants are signaling with real money that the main stage for the next phase of industrial dividends is still in the hands of a very few leading players. For the market, this not only reinforces the grand narrative that "AI will continue to change everything" but also raises the expectations for the speed of commercialization and innovation in profit models, further compressing the space for trial and error and slow iteration.
In the future, the conflicts between regulation, antitrust, and industry innovation will only become sharper: as a few companies form a more solid united front in computing power, models, and data, whether the giants' alliance will squeeze the survival space of newcomers and the open-source ecosystem will become a core issue of concern for policymakers and developer communities. For readers and market participants, when core assets are locked in by giants in advance, where can ordinary investors, developers, and startups find opportunities—whether in specific industry scenarios as "AI + vertical problem solvers" or in finding gaps in open-source, toolchains, and localized implementation, this answer will ultimately be provided by the market over the next few years.
In the future, compliance and institutionalization will become the main theme. The industry stands at a crossroads: on one side is the accelerated consolidation of discourse power and capital strength, while on the other side are the yet-to-be-fully-explored scenarios and innovation spaces. Whether one can find their own rhythm under the shadow of giants will determine whether the next batch of AI participants can board the "next ship" that is still departing.
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