Microsoft relaxes OpenAI exclusivity

Microsoft and OpenAI rewrote their alliance on April 27, ending Microsoft’s exclusive rights to OpenAI technology and opening the door to rival clouds. (blogs.microsoft.com) (reuters.com) Microsoft said Azure will remain OpenAI’s primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot or chooses not to provide the needed capacity. The company also said OpenAI can now serve all of its products to customers across any cloud provider. (blogs.microsoft.com) The new terms also changed the money and licensing structure. Microsoft said it will keep a non-exclusive license to OpenAI intellectual property for models and products through 2032, and that it will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI. (blogs.microsoft.com) That is a sharp break from the companies’ position two months ago. In a February 27 joint statement, Microsoft said Azure remained the exclusive cloud provider for stateless OpenAI application programming interfaces, and that revenue sharing was unchanged. (blogs.microsoft.com) It is also a reversal from the framework Microsoft outlined in October 2025. At that point, Microsoft said it still had exclusive intellectual-property rights and Azure application programming interface exclusivity until artificial general intelligence, or AGI. (blogs.microsoft.com) Reuters reported the revised pact clears the way for OpenAI to strike deals with rivals to Microsoft, including Amazon. TechCrunch reported the new terms also removed a legal obstacle around OpenAI’s reported deal with Amazon. (reuters.com) (techcrunch.com) The contract rewrite landed as investors were already questioning OpenAI’s growth pace. CNBC, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported on April 28 that OpenAI missed internal revenue and user-growth targets, and that finance chief Sarah Friar had raised concerns about funding future compute agreements if the slowdown continues. (cnbc.com) Microsoft has been OpenAI’s cloud backer since at least January 2023, when the companies said Azure would power all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and application programming interface services. Tuesday’s version keeps Azure in the center of the relationship, but no longer as the only route. (blogs.microsoft.com 1) (blogs.microsoft.com 2) The practical effect is simpler than the contract language: OpenAI can sell and run its products beyond Microsoft’s cloud, while Microsoft still keeps long-term access to OpenAI technology through 2032. (blogs.microsoft.com)