Compute Is the New Currency: OpenAI Signs US$38B Cloud Pact with AWS

OpenAI has signed a seven-year, US$38 billion cloud agreement with Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), gaining access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs to train and run future models. This shift comes after regulators in California and Delaware approved OpenAI’s governance overhaul, giving the company greater operational and financing flexibility while maintaining nonprofit oversight. “OpenAI will begin using Amazon Web Services immediately, with all planned capacity set to come online by the end of 2026,” a spokesperson from the company said.

The market reaction was instant, with Amazon’s stock spiking after the announcement, reflecting the confidence that AWS can win AI workloads over competitor platforms like Azure and Google Cloud.

OpenAI’s governance and capital structure have been under the microscope since 2024. In May 2025, OpenAI outlined a plan to “evolve its structure” with nonprofit control. By October 2025, OpenAI secured go-aheads from Delaware and California attorneys general for a public-benefit-corporation (PBC) setup that preserves nonprofit oversight while enabling larger capital raises for the company.

The partnership between OpenAI and AWS illustrates a defining truth of 2025: in AI, compute is the new currency.

Author: Tyler Green, 2025-2026 Articling Student-At-Law