A $1 trillion IPO looms, and Amazon may have just locked in early | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Amazon is increasingly aggressive and smart in its battle to acquire a greater role in AI.

Amazon will reportedly make a huge $10 billion investment in OpenAI, which shocked Wall Street and rattled Silicon Valley. If the Reuters report is confirmed in the not-so-distant future, the deal won’t simply be about getting in on the hottest name in AI.

It would mean that Amazon is willing to put real money behind its chips, cloud, and reputation, even if it has long been seen as behind in the AI arms race.

It’s also an uncommon move for Amazon that will have ramifications for chip stocks, cloud computing, and the planned OpenAI IPO.

Amazon’s AI problem and how $10 billion could fix it

Amazon is a cloud powerhouse thanks to AWS, but when it comes to high-profile AI projects, it has fallen behind Microsoft and Google.

Years ago, Microsoft put $13 billion into OpenAI. Google is sponsoring both its own DeepMind subsidiary and its competitor Anthropic.

As for Amazon, people have spoken a lot about its Trainium and Inferentia chips and released services like Bedrock, but investors weren’t very impressed — until now.

If Amazon invests in OpenAI, it will get one of the world’s most valuable AI workloads.

OpenAI previously inked a $38 billion cloud agreement with AWS, but this arrangement might go much further and require OpenAI to employ Amazon’s proprietary processors. That goes directly against Nvidia‘s supremacy and strongly supports Trainium’s claim of low cost and high performance.

It also has a number of strategic uses:

Gets AWS a big-name AI customer.
Shows Wall Street that Amazon’s story about bespoke silicon is true.
Tells clients that Amazon is decreasing the cost of AI computing.
Portrays Amazon as a legitimate “AI arms dealer” with tangible infrastructure.

And the market saw it. The revelation made Amazon’s stock rise, and some experts say this is when investors started to see Amazon as a real “AI play.”

A high-stakes deal, just as the cloud gets crowded

The timing couldn’t be better. AWS is still the leader in cloud market share, but it is seeing more competition from Microsoft, Google, and fast-growing “neo-cloud” firms such as CoreWeave and Crusoe.

Big companies, including Capital One, have voiced concerns about the escalating prices of AWS. Some people are even thinking about switching suppliers or creating their own AI infrastructure.

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A collaboration with OpenAI helps Amazon respond to that criticism. It sends a message: AWS isn’t simply selling computing power; it’s constructing the infrastructure for AI on a large scale and at a lower cost.

What if OpenAI trains GPT-5 on Trainium chips instead of Nvidia processors? That’s a big gain for believability.

It’s also a way to protect investments. Anthropic has already gotten money from Amazon. It might now be supporting both of the top independent AI laboratories, which would guarantee its victory.

More broadly, the deal:

Strengthens Amazon’s grip on multi-billion dollar AI workloads.
Undermines “single-cloud” dependence criticism.
Adds pressure on neo-cloud startups and rivals like Oracle.
Could slow defections from AWS by enterprise clients concerned about cost.

A trillion-dollar AI IPO? Amazon wants in

The other side? OpenAI’s plan to go public.

OpenAI may now accept money from people who don’t work for Microsoft after a big restructuring in 2025.

Amazon entering the cap table gives it more weight, which probably raises OpenAI’s value toward the projected $1 trillion IPO goal in 2026 or 2027.

Amazon isn’t only about using the cloud. It’s a gamble that OpenAI will be a key player in the next tech era. And if OpenAI leverages Amazon’s infrastructure to get there, that’s even better.

The acquisition does, however, pose certain dangers. Some experts are concerned about how “circular” these investments are: Big Tech gives money to startups, which then spend that money on Big Tech’s platforms. That kind of thing has happened before in tech bubbles.

But Amazon’s effort is plainly different in one way. It’s not simply buying enthusiasm; it wants to sell the infrastructure that makes it work.

Here’s why the deal could reshape the landscape:

Amazon would join Microsoft as a top-tier OpenAI partner.
OpenAI gains multi-cloud flexibility (Azure, AWS, Oracle).
Trainium adoption could reduce Nvidia dependence.
OpenAI gets a financial runway to delay IPO if needed.
Amazon may lock in rights to exclusive OpenAI features.