WSJ What’s News - Amazon Is in Talks to Invest Up to $50 Billion in OpenAI’s Latest Funding Round

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

P.M. Edition for Jan. 29. In an exclusive, we’re reporting that Amazon is in talks for an investment of up to $50 billion in OpenAI—a big bet on the startup that would deepen the relationship between the two companies. Plus, White House border czar Tom Homan said he’s working on a plan to draw down immigration officers in Minneapolis. Immigration reporter Michelle Hackman says that could mean changes on the ground in the city. And even as much of the U.S. is in a housing slump, sales of the most expensive homes are booming. Journal reporter Katherine Clarke discusses what’s behind the rise. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can lawmakers avoid another government shutdown? President Trump says there's a deal in the works. Plus, the White House Borders are, says he's working on drawing down immigration officers in Minneapolis. I didn't come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines. You haven't seen me. I came here to seek solutions, and that's what we're going to do. And the journal is exclusively reporting that Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI. It's Thursday, January 29th.

I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. In Minneapolis, White House Borders'ar Tom Homan has taken over the immigration operation. After a surge of law enforcement officers and weeks of clashes with protesters on Minneapolis streets that led to the deaths of two Americans, He signaled a change in tone and tactics. He said today that he was working on a plan to begin reducing the federal law enforcement presence in the city. What we've been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient by the book. Homan said the federal approach in Minneapolis hadn't been perfect. President Trump and I, along with others in administration,

have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made. That's exactly what I'm doing here. He added that the drawdown would depend on an ability to work more closely with local authorities. And Michelle Hackman, who covers immigration for the journal, says it remains to be seen how different the operations under Homan will look. Our sources are telling us that we should read this as a pretty clear turnaround in strategy. Tom Homan was long a voice in the administration of let's keep ICE operations targeted at specific people, let's go after mainly criminals. and that was a less popular view for a while. What you saw in Minnesota was what the administration was going for, these big attention-grabbing sorts of operations.

I think what we're going to see are fewer of these large street operations of these roving patrols of agents looking for people to arrest. I don't necessarily think it means ICE is going to stop arresting people in Minneapolis. Speaking at a conference of mayors in Washington today, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry called for an end to the aggressive immigration enforcement push across the U.S. Operation Metro Surge needs to end. This kind of conduct and siege needs to stop, not just in Minneapolis. It needs to stop nationwide.

There were signs that the government was pulling back in other parts of the country, like in Maine. That state Senator Susan Collins, a Republican who is up for re-election, said today that, at her urging, ICE had stopped its heightened up. operations in the state. Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Trump said the White House was moving toward a deal with Senate Democrats that could stop a partial government shutdown. Hopefully we won't have a shutdown. We're working on that right now. I think we're getting close to Democrats. I don't believe want to see it either. The shutdown deadline is tomorrow evening. But after the killing of Alex Preti in Minneapolis, Democrats don't want to pass a $1.3 billion

funding package because it funds immigration enforcement. And they want new restrictions like mandating the use of body cameras to be part of the law. Here's Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor today. Enough is enough. What ICE is doing outside the law is state-sanctioned thuggery and it must stop. He said Congress had the, quote, authority and the moral obligation to act. A vote on the full spending package failed this afternoon in the Senate. Deal talks center around taking the funding for Homeland Security out of that bill,

instead passing a short-term measure and later negotiating some restrictions on immigration enforcement. But as of today, it wasn't clear whether that would happen. Coming up, why ultra-high-end real estate is booming despite a housing market slump, and why drug makers are making some medicines cheaper. That's after the break. We're exclusively reporting that Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI is seeking up to $100 billion from investors in its current funding round, and a deal of that size could make Amazon the biggest contributor. Such an investment would deepen the company's relationship.

Amazon has also put money into OpenAI competitor Anthropic and has been investing heavily in AI infrastructure while also cutting costs internally. News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI. Indexes closed mixed today, and WSJ Marcus reporter Hannah Aaron, Erin Lang said disappointing earnings from Microsoft led to a tech sell-off, with the NASDAQ closing down 0.7%. This was primarily driven by tech stocks today. We've got two of the major U.S. stock indexes down on the day. And the big thing is that Microsoft stock dropped quite significantly.

Microsoft is a massive company. It's got above a $3 trillion market cap. It's one of only four U.S. companies in that club. So any move that's sharp in that big of a stock is going to have an impact on the indexes overall. But then there was also a slide in software stocks, so names like Workday, Salesforce. Wall Street has kind of fallen out of love with software stocks, and there's just some concern out there that AI could pose a really significant threat to those businesses. Meta bucked the trend with a post-earnings rally, rising more than 10%.

Apple just reported blowout iPhone sales in the December quarter and record profit, The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. Head to WSJ.com for more details. Chemicals giant Dow is cutting 4,500 employees as part of a push to cut costs. It's planning to use artificial intelligence to increase productivity. The job cuts came, as the company said, its quarterly loss widened because of lower revenue and higher costs. And drug makers started off the year doing something they don't usually do, cutting the prices for some widely used drugs.

Those 20 drugs included treatment. for diabetes and blood clots. A firm that analyzes drug prices found that some of the price cuts were big, as much as 92%. A big reason for the cuts were changes to government policy, like the lower prices that Medicare negotiated. The housing market in much of the U.S. has been bogged down now for a while. There are simply not that many houses to be had, and those that are are too expensive for many would-be buyers. But the ultra-luxury housing market is booming. A report from Compass, the real estate brokerage, says that sales from the country's top 10 luxury markets jumped by about a third last year from 2024.

For more on what's driving the market, I'm joined now by Catherine Clark, who covers residential real estate for WSJ. Catherine, we've talked a lot on the show about how the broader housing market isn't doing so well. Why is the ultra-high-end market, which is sales of houses that go for $10 million or more, doing so much better? It basically comes down to the composition of wealthy people's net worth in the stock market, in private equity, in real estate. Those gains are happening a lot faster than the growth of wages for most Americans. So if you look at all these AI companies that have been booming over the last year or two, a lot of those are concentrated in a particular geographic area of this country in the Bay Area that has very limited inventory of luxury homes. that money has to go somewhere and it's spreading out across the country.

When I think of the places where rich people live, I think of, first of all, New York, where I live. But also, L.A., big vacation destinations like Aspen, Colorado. But you write that there's also new hotspots growing, like Phoenix and San Diego and Dallas. What's driving sales in those cities? The biggest markets for ultra-luxury homes deals are still New York, Los Angeles, Aspen, Palm Beach. But we're starting to see markets like San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas come into their own. A deal over $10 million, you used to be a dramatic outlier for those markets. And now they are becoming more commonplace. And I think part of that is this migration that we're seeing from

higher tax states to lower tax states like Paradise Valley, Arizona and Austin, Texas. And folks attribute that a lot to wealthy people relocating from higher tax states. Like, New York and California. That was WSJ reporter, Catherine Clark. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname,

with supervising producer Tali Arbell. I'm Alex Osala for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.