OpenAI pivots toward AWS

OpenAI is steering more of its enterprise push through Amazon Web Services, telling staff that Microsoft had limited access to customers that buy artificial intelligence through Amazon’s cloud. (cnbc.com) In an internal memo sent Sunday, April 13, chief revenue officer Denise Dresser said Amazon Web Services gives OpenAI a way to reach companies that prefer Amazon Bedrock, Amazon’s marketplace for outside artificial intelligence models. Amazon and OpenAI announced that partnership on February 27. (cnbc.com, openai.com) OpenAI said Amazon will invest $50 billion, starting with $15 billion and followed by another $35 billion if conditions are met. OpenAI also said it will use 2 gigawatts of Amazon Trainium chip capacity and let Amazon Web Services act as the exclusive third-party cloud distributor for its Frontier agent platform. (openai.com) The cloud fight sits underneath this story. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, but Amazon Web Services remains the largest cloud provider and already sells models from multiple companies, including OpenAI, through Bedrock. (cnbc.com) OpenAI is also changing how it sells software to companies. Help Center documents updated in April show ChatGPT Business and ChatGPT Enterprise now use flexible pricing, shared credit pools, and a new Codex-only seat for some customers. (help.openai.com) The published ChatGPT rate card now lists usage in credits instead of broad plan descriptions. It prices GPT-5.4 Thinking at 10 credits per message, GPT-5.4 Pro at 50 credits, Deep Research at 50 credits per task, images at 5 credits per generation, and voice at 5 credits per minute. (help.openai.com) Those pricing pages make OpenAI look more like a conventional enterprise software vendor than a consumer subscription app. Business customers get per-seat limits with optional credit packs, while Enterprise and Education customers buy shared pools and can set spending controls for groups. (help.openai.com) The timing reflects how much OpenAI now depends on corporate sales. Dresser told CNBC earlier in April that enterprise accounts for 40% of OpenAI revenue and is on track to match consumer revenue by the end of 2026. (cnbc.com) OpenAI is making these moves after closing a $122 billion funding round on March 31 at an $852 billion valuation. Rival Anthropic said on February 12 that it raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation, and CNBC reported that Claude has become a strong force in enterprise buying. (openai.com, anthropic.com, cnbc.com) OpenAI is not walking away from Microsoft. It is adding Amazon Web Services as a second route into big-company budgets, while publishing the kind of seat types, overage rules, and rate cards that procurement teams expect to see. (cnbc.com, help.openai.com)