OpenAI-Amazon Talks for $10B Investment, Waymo’s Massive Fundraise, IPO Analysis | Dec 17, 2025

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the information's TI TV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Wednesday, December 17th. We have got a jam-packed show for you full of exclusive reporting. The information is first to report that OpenAI is in talks to raise at least$10 billion from Amazon and use its chips. We'll break it all down with the reporter behind that scoop. We're also speaking with our Deputy Bureau Chief of Venture Capital about her scoop that Waymo is in early talks of raising billions of dollars. Next up, OpenAI and Anthropic are exploring acquisitions of specialized data pools as both prepare for the next wave of AI training.

0:52And we'll also look at how Wall Street is gearing up for a run of mega IPOs, which could include OpenAI and Anthropic. And we'll end with a look at our weekly finance column. There is a lot to get to, so let's get right on into things. The information has exclusive reporting that Amazon is in talks to invest$10 billion or more in OpenAI. Joining me now is one of the reporters who broke the story, Anissa Gardizi. Anissa, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks, Akash. It was a busy night. It was a busy night, indeed. This is a big deal. Walk us through what you learned in your reporting.

1:28So we learned from our sources that Amazon is in talks to invest$10 billion or more into OpenAI in a deal that could also see OpenAI using Amazon's Tranium chips, in addition to the GPUs from NVIDIA that OpenAI uses. So this would be a major investment by Amazon into OpenAI. And Amazon historically has tied itself to Anthropic. But as we've seen in the past couple of weeks, Anthropic has done big deals with Microsoft and Google. So Amazon is also forming another alliance with OpenAI. So I do want to dig into this a little further, but I was counting all the companies that OpenAI has deals with now.

2:12And I think the question now really is who doesn't OpenAI have a deal with? Because they have the deal with NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom. They've got Amazon for the chips. I guess they don't have a Google TPU deal just yet. Meta has that, or at least according to our reporting. Gosh, OpenAI is really just, you know, they're using everybody at this point. Yeah, that's right. And Amazon is the largest cloud provider. So, you know, they obviously are looking around the room and seeing that OpenAI is projecting that it's going to be spending, you know, potentially hundreds of billions on cloud computing in the future.

2:48So I think it makes sense that the largest cloud provider does want a piece of that. And, you know, this is just a long time coming, I think. And so, you know, this is also one of these circular deals we've been talking about, although Amazon here would be both the chip player and the cloud player, whereas sometimes we've seen that spread apart. but it's another one of these vendor financing deals, right? Where OpenAI is essentially getting paid to pay money back to Amazon. Yeah, as you might remember, just last month, Amazon and OpenAI announced a strategic partnership in which OpenAI said that over the next couple of years, it's going to spend somewhere around$38 billion on renting Amazon servers.

3:31Of course, that and that deal only covered GPUs from NVIDIA. So yeah, now if OpenAI were to get a cash injection from Amazon, it might help them pay their cloud bills, including their Amazon cloud bill. Do you think Microsoft is really upset about this or was this kind of expected and par for the course at this point? I think since we expected that this would happen, I'm sure Microsoft also saw the writing on the wall and was expecting it too. Amazon is its largest cloud competitor, So I'm sure this isn't an ideal scenario for them. But Microsoft does still maintain a large advantage if this deal gets done.

4:10Microsoft is the only cloud company that's allowed to sell OpenAI models to cloud customers. And that's, you know, they've maintained the exclusive right to do so, even as OpenAI has been able to sign other cloud deals. So there definitely is a silver lining for Microsoft. Well, and the other link that I'm thinking about here, and you mentioned this up top, But Amazon has worked so closely with Anthropic, and we know that Anthropic has been big in helping Amazon get its Tranium chip out into the market. I mean, I'm looking at Dario and Daniela saying, I thought you were giving Tranium to us. I mean, I know everyone's working with everybody, but OpenA and Anthropic are rivals here.

4:49And so I'm sure there was maybe a tough conversation there between Andy Jassy and Dario. Yeah, I think from Andy Jassy's perspective, he really needs a leading model company to at least publicly talk about using Tranium chips. And we know that AWS has that existing deal with Anthropic, but in recent weeks, all the news that we've been hearing and breaking are about Anthropic using Google's TPUs. So it seems like pretty good timing for Andy Jassy to be calling Sam Altman about Tranium chips. It's actually nuts. I feel like we should have, and maybe you have this on your whiteboard at home already, but we should have a matrix of all the companies that I work with all the companies.

5:34And as a reporter, if there is not a link tying two companies, that should be the question that you're asking, really. Yeah, that's essentially what happened here with Amazon and OpenAI. So the matrix is getting even more complicated. Let me ask you one question before you go. So what questions do you have now going forward here about this story? Yeah, one thing we heard from our sources was that this investment by Amazon could kick off a broader financing effort that OpenAI does. So I think heading into the holidays, that is what we will be making calls on for sure. Great. Well, Anissa, it was a big story.

6:10Congrats on the scoop and look forward to having you on once again as you learn more. That is Anissa Gardizi, our cloud and compute reporter here at The Information. Okay. The information has exclusive reporting that Waymo is in early talks with potential investors to raise more money at a valuation of at least$100 billion. Joining me now is our Deputy Bureau Chief of Venture Capital, Katie Roof, who broke that story. Katie, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Good to be here. So how far along are these new Waymo talks? so it's somewhat early although they have already been in conversations with investors they have not decided the exact valuation but they know that it's going to be at least 100 billion um you know waymo is partially owned by alphabet the parent of google and um they you know but they also have existing outside investors such as indrescent horowitz and they'll be taking more and how does this round compared to past funding rounds that the company has done?

7:14Well, the valuation is higher. It's more than double the last round. I broke the$45 billion last year at my former employer. And so they are hoping to capitalize on this momentum. They have not only expanded their ridership in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities, but they have also gotten a lot of regulatory green lights where they can potentially expand further. They also have several new cities they're adding this year. And I think they're hoping that investors will invest based on that momentum. What do you think the company is going to do with all the money? Well, it's a costly business, you know, for a lot of R &D for the cars and, you know, safety protocols.

8:03And so I think that they, from what I understand, are not yet profitable. So they have to keep that, you know, to expand, they have to keep spending. But, you know, they haven't disclosed anything in particular, you know, sometimes when companies raise money, it's often for hiring, but sometimes it's for acquisitions. Can I ask you, Katie, have you taken a Waymo yet before? I took one here. You took one here? I accidentally thanked the driver, and I was like, wait, there's no driver. You took one here to discuss the scoop that the company behind the vehicle that you were in is going to raise more money, and you didn't even have a driver to tell.

8:43I mean, you know, it would have been nice to have a driver there. Just so you know, I know something that, you know, your bosses don't know I know. God says, okay. Well, and let me ask you, when you took the Waymo here, did you take it with the Waymo app? Did you take it with another ride-sharing app? Yeah, I took it with the Waymo app, but they also partner with Uber. And, you know, they're not the only ride-sharing, driverless ride-sharing service available. Tesla's in the early phases of rolling out its robo-taxi service. And then, you know, our office in San Francisco, we always see the Zoox going by.

9:21They're owned by Amazon. So, you know, Waymo certainly has the dominant market share here and the early mover advantage, but it remains to be seen whether others will eventually catch up. Well, so one of the big questions I have is how Waymo sort of sees its relationship with these ride-hailing services evolve in the future. Because, as we said, they have the Waymo app. They also have these partnerships. I'm sort of wondering how it thinks about that split. What other reporting questions might you have about the future of this business? Yeah, well, I think, you know, when I talk to investors, you know, some of them are really, really hoping to invest because of the momentum and because of the, you know, they see the future here.

10:03But, you know, right now, it looks like a very, very high multiple that they're going to be getting. There's estimates out there that their revenue is like 300, maybe 350 million. And so north of 100 billion valuation. I mean, you really are baking in a lot of expectations for this company. And so I think some investors want to know, will they be able to keep up this momentum? And are the unit economic sustainable? Meaning, can they eventually improve to the point where they are at profitability or close? Right. Great. Well, Katie, it was a big scoop. Congrats. Thanks for coming on the show and look forward to talk to you again very soon.

10:47Thank you. Okay. As the tech sector awaits three big IPOs in the coming years from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, bankers are trying to find ways to limit mass selling of shares given how much money has been raised privately and early. Joining me now to discuss the dilemma is Valida Po, our deals reporter at The Information. Valida, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. It's nice to be here again. So what exactly is the dilemma here that bankers are facing so because um tech companies like spacex anthropic and um open ai has raised so much like private capital and they want to raise more in the potential ipos that could come in the next 18 months and these companies all have like large shareholder bases and special purpose vehicles that created in their formation that's why um bankers are trying to see how do they face out like you know the selling of the shares so um usually an IPO process is um when companies stand their lockup period of like 90 or like 180 days and bankers are largely ruling that out and thinking about how they would do like staggered release like you know maybe every 20 or like 30 days how can we space it out for like longer in for like structuring those releases so this is what they're thinking about, like with the companies.

12:12Well, and this is kind of interesting because never before do I feel like we've seen a slate of IPO companies or IPO hopeful companies that have raised so much money. I mean, they have so many employees. They have so much capital, right? I mean, we see OpenAI as fundraising every two months. We hear a new round. Which are the big banks that we're talking about here that are at the center of the story? So usually like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs dominate the tech IPO business and one or the other have led all the major tech listings. Of course, like all the other banks may want to get a seat in the IPO as well, but mostly it's the two banks that dominated the tech IPO business.

12:56So I'm curious for these banks who are faced with this challenge here, they have a number of different alternatives. They can do this staggered release, as you talked about. Is there anything to gain from the banker's end? Do they get more fees here? if they get it right? I mean, I haven't even studied how the compensation for these banks worked, but what do they stand to gain? So for like the banks who are underwriting the IPOs, they will actually get like, you know, a single digit percent share from like, you know, how much money they're raising. So for example, if you're raising a 50 billion IPO, a bankers, if they get 3%, that's like, you know, 1.5 billion in the fees they can get for running this huge IPO.

13:36So that's lots of money at stake for the bankers. It's also like a historic IPO's opportunities for them. And then does it typically at all, does their compensation matter with respect to what happens to the stock price in the days after the IPO at all? They just get the underwriting fee, I think. But I mean, it certainly is a dilemma. I mean, I wonder, based on everything you're seeing, do you have any sense on where this might go? are you confident that they'll get it right? I mean, bankers, they seem to be pretty innovative, right? The tech IPO circles have seen lots of innovations from the auctions and into direct listing and direct listing where you can raise money.

14:19So I'm sure bankers would try to come up with the most comprehensive or innovative solutions to prevent whatever big issues may face these companies. Great. Well, Valida, it was a great story. Do me a favor, stick around for one minute. We're going to bring you right back for our next segment. These days, it seems like you can ask a chatbot almost anything, and it will serve up an answer, offering instant access to a vast range of knowledge. But according to reporting from the information, the well is starting to run dry in terms of publicly available data that these bots can scrape. And so companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google are discussing data deals with companies they feel might be able to fill specific knowledge gaps.

15:02Here to explain that are our deals reporter, Valida Pau, and our AI reporter, Stephanie Palazzolo. Welcome back, Valida. Welcome, Steph. Valida, I want to start with you. Which companies are OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google starting to speak to? So we have heard that staff at OpenAI have spoke to life science companies like Revit or Ciro, which is just an accounting software companies. And they also have mass outreach to kind of biotech companies, consumer health care, like software or financial services, startups or companies just like to feel out if there's a potential opportunity there. And are any of those companies, are they agreeing to sell their data at all?

15:47What's the status? I think most of the companies have said no because they have such proprietary data as that are unique to them. and there's lots of like complicated issues regarding like privacy rights or like usage rights of those data. So I think companies are usually leaning against no. Steph, it feels like that's an obvious answer here, right? I mean, why would a company sitting on this data, and we've talked about this, I mean, companies like Shopify, for example, they're sitting on all this data that OpenAI and the chatbot companies would need. That's the crown jewel, right? I don't see any scenario why a company would actually give it up.

16:25Yeah, well, I mean, I think for a lot of companies, there is always a price that they might become interested in. So in some cases, it might just be that for the right price, the company would, you know, entertain the idea, but their price might just be higher than what the AI labs are kind of willing to pay. I think another thing that could be going on too is, in some cases, companies might be shutting down. And so what I wrote about this morning is there are some companies that are basically shutting down that are interested in selling their code bases to AI labs. And so in those cases, they're not really giving up much because they would have shut down either way.

17:05Do we know anything about how much a code base might fetch in this data market? Yeah, so we're not exactly sure. So kind of what's going on is there's a couple of these like data labeling curation startups like Terrain or Afterquery. It's another newer one that we haven't written about as much. And they are basically going out to these kind of failed startups, basically, or startups that have closed down and asking to buy their code bases. So we're not sure how much they then turn around and sell these code bases for to the AI labs. But But from our story from this morning, we've heard that they will buy the code bases anywhere from, you know,$10 ,000 to$50 ,000 or$60 ,000 per code base.

17:50On average, kind of the tens of thousands of dollars. Right. Valida, are there any privacy concerns here with these data selling deals? I mean, we know that our data is everywhere, but how are they approaching that? So usually like in M &A discussions, like, you know, companies would be interested in like, you know, buying a company outright because they would have access to those data. But there's different privacy agreements like with the users that may not allow, you know, companies to use the way they may intend to. For example, like when the AI lab wants to use the data in a company that they want to train their models on, they may not necessarily have that permissions.

18:26and if it's including like a biotech or healthcare companies and patients' data or medical records are involved, it's much more rigorous and it could be federally regulated. So it's kind of complicated in terms of like, you know, how much they can share, like how much they can use and what the parameters they might be able to use those data. So these complicated deals, if they would happen. Right. And Steph, you know, as you think about the reporting questions here moving forward, what are the big questions that come to mind for you? And one that comes to mind for me is how expensive is it? How long would it take to generate that data, to collect that data on your own as a model maker?

19:06When does it become better to buy versus to build? What sorts of questions are you thinking about? Yeah, I mean, lots of things on that. I think in some cases, yes, it's very expensive for an AI lab like OpenAI to come up with this data on their own. But in other cases, it might just be impossible for them to come up with their own realistic data sets that kind of match what you see in the real world. So in like niches like healthcare or biotech, you know, open AI researchers are super smart, but they're not necessarily like, you know, biotech scientists or doctors. And so no matter what they do, I think it's kind of difficult for them to come up with that sort of data by themselves.

19:46And so for that sort of thing, they might just have to go through the acquisition route of trying to buy that data from existing companies. I think in terms of questions that this raises for me, I think one question is just moving forward, what types of data are AI labs most interested in and what can that tell us about their product focuses moving forward? So if there is this kind of special interest in consumer healthcare or biotech data, does that mean that companies like OpenAI or Google or Anthropic will want to get into those spaces later, whether that means selling, you know, healthcare apps to everyday consumers like us or selling tools to doctors or scientists?

20:31And so I think it kind of gives us like a sneak peek into what types of products or industries AI labs might want to move into next. Right. Well, Valida and Steph, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Valida Pau, our deals reporter, and Stephanie Palazzolo, our AI reporter here at The Information. All right. Well, we just talked about the avalanche of IPOs that could be coming next year. Today, in our weekly finance column, our editor, Ken Brown, discusses how that could have implications on the valuations of these companies, broadly speaking, and I want to bring them on to talk all about it.

21:04Ken, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Hi, Akash. So what was the thrust of the column that you wrote today? The thrust was a little bit of a warning, which is it focuses on scarcity value. And so the idea is these private, these giant private companies that we're talking about might go public, SpaceX and OpenAI and Anthropic. One of the reasons they're so valuable, they're raising money at these hundreds of billions of dollars valuation is because they're scarce. It's hard to get into them. There's a whole army of people who say, you know, hey, Akash, you want to get into this great company?

21:39I'm the guy who can get you into this great company. And so there's a premium in the valuation because they're private and they're not easy to get into. Okay. And so eventually these companies go public. Suddenly their stock is free flowing. Everybody can get their hands on it. You know, this is the private public premium that people talk about. So I wonder, talk a little bit about examples where we've seen this. You laid out a couple of them, crypto, real estate. What happened in those two? So, right. So the idea is when things get out there in the market, there is there's a less of a premium on the scarcity.

22:15Right. So crypto, you know, for a bunch of years, for as long as crypto has been around, you had to be a crypto trader. You had to have a crypto account to buy crypto. And not a lot of people did. I mean, some people did, but, you know, your average investor, you know, they have a stock market and bond market account, typical brokerage account. So then a couple of years ago, we had the first Bitcoin ETF. And then there was this flood of all these ETFs and all these companies like MicroStrategy, now called Strategy, that basically stuff themselves with crypto and trade on the stock exchange. And so all of a sudden, all these investors who typically invest in just stocks and bonds could easily buy crypto.

22:53And so the scarcity of crypto disappeared. So what happened? Well, so there was a boom, which often happens. These things come on the public markets and there's a boom. Everyone gets excited. Everyone buys them. And then also what often happens is there's been a crash. And so a lot of these things have fallen a lot. And they peak just at the time of maximum interest of average investors. And then they crash. So strategy now is down by two thirds. And Bitcoin is down a lot. And then all these wacky ones, there's literally hundreds have crashed as well. And so it's a pattern that we've seen over and over again.

23:32So real estate, same thing. You know, most real estate is in private hands. And Brookfield and some other, not Brookfield, Blackstone and some other private equity firms offered these funds that got people, gave people access to this. and money poured in and everyone was happy. And then they weren't anymore. You know, performance declined. With real estate, everyone tried to get out. Real estate is illiquid. And it turns out they were stuck there and they had to write it down. So these are just warnings that once things become more democratized or more, you know, that everyone can buy, sometimes there's a value, you know, valuation can go down just because there's not a scarcity value.

24:16Well, let me ask you this. The crypto example is interesting because on one hand, I mean, when I was covering crypto back in 2022, the whole thing was once we get the ETFs approved and once we get them out there, I mean, then people will really start to become familiar with cryptocurrencies broadly, even if they don't have to buy it on exchange. I mean, it will help with awareness and that will in turn drive the price up and maybe even people will become more comfortable with adopting it down the road. You're saying it's kind of has the opposite effect, which is that now it's readily available.

24:50I mean, could you see the argument made the other way and saying, I mean, this is how crypto, for example, how it goes mainstream? Yeah, look, we don't know what's going to happen in the future, right? And sometimes things do play out, you know, over time when people do become comfortable. I mean, you know, there's, you know, certainly, you know, you can't, you're not going to predict out all these years. I mean, the reality with crypto was it came out and went public and everyone said, oh, oh, I can make money on this. I don't think there was much thought about this as a new currency or this is a new way to invest or a new way to manage investments.

25:23This was just like, this is going up, I'm going to buy it. Sadly, we know this from mutual funds, we know this from ETFs, people buy what's been going up. Sadly, that is a bad way to invest, but that's what people do. This is what happened. It went up. It went public, sort of. You could get at it. It went up and everyone bought it and then it went down. So it happens. Well, and so, again, trying to think about parallels here, you know, you mentioned in your column the idea that the caveat is, look, if AI and space, for example, become huge markets and the fundamentals of the businesses will boom.

26:01I wonder if you go back to the period where all these SaaS companies started going public. I mean, was it kind of a similar story there where you had all these private companies? They weren't raising as much money, mind you. I mean, you know, these were less capitalized businesses. But, you know, I'm sort of trying to think about how that story played out because we kind of did see a boom in the valuations. And then they very much did come down. Yeah. So I don't think these, the SaaS companies had these high valuations as private companies, as crazy as we're seeing now. So there wasn't that much of a scarcity value.

26:35I mean, maybe there was some, but they were not raising tens and$20 billion at a time. And so I think the first part of the equation wasn't there, I think. And then these SaaS companies, when they did go public, I mean, they had real profits and real cash flow. I mean, that's a good business, right? Open AI, you know, you just don't know. It's really speculative how much money they're going to make, how they're going to manage all the spending and the cash burn. I mean, so it's a different, you know, this is a much more speculative business. So it is different. And I think people see these things as world changing, which they may be, but they're putting that valuation on them.

27:15So when they do go public, you know, when they do go public, they're going to have to produce quarterly earnings and cash flow and all that stuff. And there's going to be daily pricing on them. And, you know, that can be sobering for some of these investments. Great. Well, Ken, I thought it was a great column. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about it. That is Ken Brown, our finance editor here at The Information. Okay. Well, that does it for today's show. A reminder, we are on this stream Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. I want to thank Amazon Web Services, who is our presenting sponsor for this production.