SAN FRANCISCO, California: OpenAI announced it is raising US$110 billion in new funding, valuing the ChatGPT maker at $840 billion in one of the largest private capital raises to date.

The round underscores the intense competition among major technology firms to secure stakes in leading artificial intelligence companies, as OpenAI continues to invest heavily in data center infrastructure ahead of a potential initial public offering later this year.

The funding includes $30 billion from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon.

Amazon will initially invest $15 billion, with an additional $35 billion to follow upon meeting certain conditions.

As part of the agreement, OpenAI will use 2 gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon's Trainium chips. The companies also said Amazon Web Services (AWS) will become the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, OpenAI's enterprise platform for building and managing AI agents.

The new arrangement does not alter OpenAI's existing partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft Azure will remain the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI's application programming interfaces (APIs), which give developers access to its AI models.

OpenAI's first-party products will continue to be hosted on Azure, and Microsoft retains its exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI's models and products.

It was not immediately clear whether Nvidia's $30 billion investment replaces a previous commitment announced in September under which Nvidia said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI.

OpenAI and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.