New Delhi: OpenAI and Microsoft have changed one of the AI industry’s most closely watched partnerships, giving OpenAI more room to sell its products beyond Microsoft Azure. The updated agreement means OpenAI can now “serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider,” while Azure remains its primary cloud partner.
This is a big change for a partnership that began with Microsoft’s $1 billion investment in OpenAI in 2019. For years, the two companies moved like one of tech’s strongest AI pairs. Now, the relationship looks more open, with OpenAI able to reach customers on other cloud platforms while Microsoft keeps long-term access to OpenAI’s models.
OpenAI can now go beyond Azure
Under the amended agreement, Microsoft will continue to hold a licence for OpenAI’s IP and models through 2032. Azure will remain OpenAI’s “primary cloud partner” during this period, as long as Microsoft can continue to support its needs.
The key shift is that Microsoft’s licence is now “non-exclusive.” In plain English, OpenAI can make its models available through other major cloud providers.
That matters for large companies. Many enterprises already run workloads on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or other platforms. For them, buying OpenAI models only through Azure may have been a speed breaker.
Amazon deal changed the pressure
The change comes two months after Amazon and OpenAI reportedly struck a $50 billion deal involving OpenAI models running on Amazon Web Services. The shared context says the Financial Times reported that Microsoft had threatened legal action over that deal. The amended agreement may now settle that cloud access issue.
OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser reportedly told staff that the Microsoft partnership had “limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s [Amazon] Bedrock.” She also reportedly wrote that interest in running OpenAI’s models through Amazon’s cloud had “been frankly staggering.”
What changes for Microsoft?
Microsoft still keeps a lot. It will retain OpenAI model rights through 2032 and will continue receiving 20 percent revenue share payments under the amended deal. That payment is now capped at an undisclosed amount and is guaranteed only through 2030.
The updated revenue share is also now “independent of OpenAI’s technology progress,” which appears to move away from the old AGI-linked structure.