Amazon Offers Glimpse Into AI Investments

 Amazon ($AMZN) filed its quarterly report last week, which gives us a great opportunity to talk about one of the most important questions on Wall Street these days.

How much exposure do the tech giants (Amazon included) have to artificial intelligence darlings Anthropic and OpenAI? 

Anthropic and OpenAI don’t disclose much about their financial structure or performance directly, since they’re privately held. The tech giants pouring billions and billions into both firms, however, do disclose some details about those investments. 

So if analysts know where to look, you can learn quite about about who is investing in whom, to what extent, and what those investments are worth from one quarter to the next.

Start with Amazon and its first-quarter 10-Q, filed on April 30. Using our Disclosures & Footnotes Query page, we did a quick search of “Anthropic” across the whole filing and found multiple references to Anthropic. 

Most informative was a disclosure in the Financial Instruments footnote titled “Non-Marketable Securities.” There, Amazon reported that in fourth-quarter 2025 the company invested $8 billion in convertible notes from Anthropic. 

There’s more. In first-quarter 2026, a portion of the then-outstanding notes was converted to nonvoting preferred stock. Then came a long description of the valuation of these investments… 

As a result of these conversions, a portion of the unrealized gain associated with the notes included in “Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)” was reclassified and a gain of approximately $3.3 billion and $4.5 billion was recorded in “Other income (expense), net.” In Q1 2026, we also recorded an upward adjustment of approximately $12.3 billion to our nonvoting preferred stock in “Other income (expense), net” to reflect observable changes in price. As of December 31, 2025 and March 31, 2026, the amounts recorded on our consolidated balance sheets for nonvoting preferred stock were approximately $14.8 billion and $32.0 billion. As of December 31, 2025 and March 31, 2026, the estimated fair value of our convertible notes recorded on our consolidated balance sheets was approximately $45.8 billion and $42.2 billion, and the associated unrealized gain included in “Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)” was $39.5 billion and $36.3 billion. We also have a commercial arrangement primarily for the provision of AWS cloud services, which includes the use of AWS chips.

We’re just data nerds here, so we won’t speculate on the wisdom of these investments or what they might mean for Amazon’s larger financial picture. That said, we have written previously about how much “Other Income” contributes to Amazon’s bottom line, and how much of that Other Income number comes from re-valuations Amazon makes to its holdings in Anthropic. 

Meanwhile, OpenAI

Immediately after its discussion of investments in Anthropic, Amazon also makes disclosures about its investment in OpenAI. 

For starters was this:

In Q1 2026, we invested $15.0 billion in Series C Preferred Stock of OpenAI, and we also entered into an equity commitment letter agreement (the “Letter Agreement”), pursuant to which we agreed to purchase additional shares of Series C Preferred Stock (the “Commitment Shares”) with an aggregate purchase price of $35.0 billion (the “Commitment Amount”). We may, in our sole discretion, elect to purchase all or any portion of the Commitment Shares at any time pursuant to the Letter Agreement. To the extent that we have not done so previously, we are obligated to purchase all remaining Commitment Shares upon the earlier to occur of (i) OpenAI meeting specified milestones, and (ii) OpenAI directly or indirectly consummating an initial public offering or direct listing of equity securities in the United States (a “Public Listing Transaction”), in each case subject to certain terms and conditions.

This investment traces back to a headline from February, which breathlessly gushed, “OpenAI announces $110 billion funding round with backing from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank.” 

That headline wasn’t inaccurate, but the details in Amazon’s disclosures show a much more nuanced tale. Amazon is committed to $50 billion of that $110 billion sum, but only if OpenAI hits certain performance targets. 

One of those targets is an IPO, supposedly happening sometime later this year. OpenAI reportedly has had trouble hitting financial goals, which could hamper those ambitions and timeline, although it does seem like an IPO will happen eventually. 

The other criteria is “OpenAI meeting certain milestones.” What does that mean? According to the Financial Times, OpenAI must achieve artificial general intelligence — however that’s defined, which seems ripe for interpretation.

For Amazon to pony up the full $50 billion promised in those headlines, OpenAI must either hold an IPO (likely, but we don’t know when) or achieve artificial general intelligence (good luck defining that). Otherwise, Amazon is only only the hook for $15 billion.

Those are the sort of details you can find by reading the footnotes. We haven’t even looked at Amazon’s other investments yet, or what any of the other tech giants (Oracle, Meta, Google, Microsoft) have been disclosing in their footnotes.

So yes, much of the inner workings of AI are a black box — but they’re not entirely black, if you have the right tools to help you find the right data.