OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models could help power Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa and other internal projects at the e-commerce giant, CNBC confirmed on Wednesday.
The collaboration between the two companies is being discussed in tandem with Amazon’s ongoing talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.
OpenAI could also use Amazon’s AI chips and compute as part of the deal, the person said.
Amazon declined to comment. The Information was first to report the partnership.
The investment talks between Amazon and OpenAI have not been finalized and are still subject to change, as CNBC previously reported. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are engaging in the discussions directly.
For Amazon, gaining access to OpenAI’s models could provide a boost to its AI efforts, which span multiple divisions of the company. In addition to Alexa, Amazon has invested heavily in building out its shopping chatbot, called Rufus, which sits in its e-commerce app and uses a custom internal model to answer queries.
Amazon last year released a revamped version of its 11-year-old Alexa that aims to compete with leading chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Amazon has said the new service, Alexa+, is “model agnostic,” meaning it may call different AI models from a variety of providers depending on the task.
CNBC previously reported that Anthropic’s Claude model is handling many of Alexa+’s more complex queries. Amazon has an existing relationship and $8 billion investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic.
Amazon’s top Alexa executive, Daniel Rausch, told CNBC in an interview this week that the majority of traffic is routed to its homegrown Nova models. Rausch added that the company uses upwards of 70 different models, and said the company has a “great partnership” with Anthropic and other model providers hosted by its Bedrock service.
OpenAI also has an existing relationship with Apple on its Siri voice assistant. Last month, Apple struck a deal with Google to use its Gemini models for its upgraded Siri voice assistant coming later this year.
OpenAI views the opportunity to work with Amazon as more “accretive” to its broader enterprise push compared to its work with Apple, which could pose more competition with OpenAI’s new devices, according to a source familiar with the company’s strategy.
OpenAI is making a massive push into devices, acquiring Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io for about $6.4 billion last year.
