OpenAI pivots toward AWS

OpenAI is steering more of its business toward Amazon Web Services as it tries to sell into companies that do not run on Microsoft. (cnbc.com) In a memo sent Sunday, chief revenue officer Denise Dresser told staff that Microsoft had “limited our ability” to meet enterprise customers “where they are,” and said demand for the Amazon offering had been “staggering” since the partnership was announced in late February. (cnbc.com) Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is the cloud division many large companies already use to rent computing power, data storage and software tools. OpenAI is pitching AWS as a simpler route into those customers because Amazon’s Bedrock service already sells access to outside artificial intelligence models. (cnbc.com) The shift comes after OpenAI and Microsoft loosened parts of their cloud arrangement over the past 15 months. In January 2025, Microsoft said it no longer had exclusive rights to provide all of OpenAI’s computing infrastructure and would instead get a right of first refusal on new capacity. (techcrunch.com) The two companies then reset the partnership again in October 2025 and February 2026. Microsoft said OpenAI could build some non-application programming interface products with third parties on any cloud, while Azure would remain the exclusive home for stateless OpenAI application programming interfaces. (blogs.microsoft.com) (openai.com) That means the relationship is not ending. OpenAI and Microsoft said on February 27, 2026 that their revenue-sharing deal remained unchanged and that any stateless application programming interface calls generated through a collaboration with Amazon would still run on Azure. (openai.com) OpenAI is making this push while trying to catch rivals in corporate accounts. CNBC reported that Anthropic’s Claude model has gained momentum with business customers, while Google’s Gemini is also competing for the same budgets. (cnbc.com) The enterprise business is already large enough to shape OpenAI’s strategy. Dresser told CNBC earlier in April that enterprise sales account for 40% of OpenAI’s revenue and are on track to reach parity with its consumer business by the end of 2026. (cnbc.com) Amazon’s role has been getting bigger on the financing and hardware side too. CNBC reported in December 2025 that OpenAI was discussing a possible Amazon investment of more than $10 billion alongside an agreement to use Amazon-designed artificial intelligence chips, after signing a $38 billion AWS capacity deal the month before. (cnbc.com) So the new memo reads less like a breakup than a rerouting. OpenAI still depends on Azure for core application programming interface plumbing, but it is using AWS to get in front of more corporate buyers. (openai.com) (cnbc.com)