OpenAI breaks Microsoft exclusivity

OpenAI can now sell and serve its models across any cloud provider after Microsoft rewrote the terms of their partnership on April 27. (microsoft.com) Microsoft said it remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot or chooses not to provide the needed capabilities. (microsoft.com) The same agreement says Microsoft’s license to OpenAI intellectual property now runs through 2032 on a non-exclusive basis, and Microsoft will no longer pay OpenAI a revenue share. (microsoft.com) On April 28, Amazon Web Services said OpenAI’s latest models, Codex, and Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI were coming to Amazon Bedrock in limited preview. (aboutamazon.com) (openai.com) Amazon called the move a “major expansion” of its relationship with OpenAI, and OpenAI said Bedrock customers can apply eligible Codex usage toward existing AWS cloud commitments. (apnews.com) (openai.com) That matters to large companies because many already buy cloud capacity through Amazon or Microsoft contracts, and they can now reach OpenAI models through more than one route. (openai.com) (microsoft.com) This change had been building for more than a year. In January 2025, Microsoft said OpenAI’s exclusivity on new capacity had already shifted to a right-of-first-refusal model. (microsoft.com) OpenAI and Amazon had also been moving closer before this week. In February, the companies announced a strategic partnership to build a Stateful Runtime Environment for agents on Amazon Bedrock. (openai.com) (aboutamazon.com) Microsoft and OpenAI said in a joint statement on February 27 that those Amazon announcements did not change the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship previously outlined in October 2025. (microsoft.com) Now the arrangement is explicit: Azure keeps priority, but OpenAI is no longer locked to one cloud when it sells models and tools to enterprise customers. (microsoft.com)