OpenAI can sell on AWS and Google Cloud

OpenAI and Microsoft rewrote their partnership on April 27, ending Microsoft’s exclusive right to host and sell OpenAI products. (openai.com) (blogs.microsoft.com) The new terms let OpenAI serve all of its products to customers across any cloud provider, including rivals to Microsoft Azure. Microsoft still keeps a license to OpenAI intellectual property for models and products through 2032, but that license is now non-exclusive. (openai.com) (blogs.microsoft.com) Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner under the amended deal. OpenAI said its products will ship first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the required capabilities. (openai.com) The rewrite replaces a much tighter arrangement that OpenAI and Microsoft described in January 2023, when Azure was still the exclusive cloud provider for all OpenAI workloads. It also supersedes a February 2026 joint statement that still called Azure the exclusive cloud provider for stateless application programming interfaces, or APIs. (openai.com 1) (openai.com 2) (blogs.microsoft.com) The money terms changed too. OpenAI said revenue-share payments from OpenAI to Microsoft continue through 2030 at the same percentage as before, but now with a total cap, while Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI. (openai.com) (blogs.microsoft.com) OpenAI also said Microsoft continues to participate directly in its growth as a major shareholder. Reuters and other outlets reported Microsoft’s stake at about 27%, but the companies’ own statements did not publish a percentage in the April 27 announcement. (openai.com) (msn.com) The shift gives OpenAI a direct route into customers that already buy infrastructure from Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud instead of Azure. It also leaves Azure with a preferred position rather than an exclusive one. (axios.com) (openai.com) OpenAI had already been broadening its infrastructure beyond Microsoft. In March, the company said its cloud strategy spanned Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, CoreWeave, and Google Cloud. (openai.com) For customers, the practical change is where OpenAI products can be bought and run, not whether Microsoft disappears from the picture. Azure stays first in line when it can handle the workload; it just no longer gets the whole market by contract. (openai.com)