Microsoft is giving up its exclusive grip on OpenAI's cloud business, ending a partnership structure that defined the early AI boom. The two companies announced an amended agreement Monday that lets OpenAI serve its models through any cloud provider, including AWS and Google Cloud. Azure remains OpenAI's "primary cloud partner" and products will ship first on Microsoft's infrastructure, but that exclusivity is gone. The catalyst was money. Two months ago, Amazon struck a $50 billion deal with OpenAI to run certain models on Amazon Bedrock. The Financial Times reported Microsoft threatened legal action over that arrangement. Monday's amendment makes that threat moot.
OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser told staff earlier this month that the Microsoft lock-in had "limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are." Demand for running OpenAI's models through Amazon's cloud has been "frankly staggering," she reportedly wrote. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirmed Monday that OpenAI models will hit Bedrock "in the coming weeks." The financial mechanics flipped too. Microsoft will no longer pay OpenAI a revenue share on products it resells through Azure.
Instead, OpenAI continues paying Microsoft 20 percent of its revenue through 2030, now capped and "independent of OpenAI's technology progress" -- language that sidesteps the old AGI clause, which would have voided exclusivity if OpenAI achieved artificial general intelligence.
Microsoft keeps access to OpenAI's IP and models through 2032 under a non-exclusive license. It also remains a major shareholder in the ChatGPT maker. The deal marks roughly five years of what was essentially Azure-only distribution for OpenAI's most important models. The cracks started showing in 2025 with the Oracle-backed Stargate Project, followed by the Amazon partnership earlier this year. With cloud barriers gone, speculation around an OpenAI IPO has intensified in recent months.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called the move a win for developers: "Builders will have even more choice to pick the right model for the right job."
