OpenAI courts Amazon

OpenAI is telling employees that Amazon, not Microsoft, is becoming the key route for selling its artificial intelligence tools to big companies. (cnbc.com) In a Sunday memo viewed by CNBC, chief revenue officer Denise Dresser said the Amazon Web Services tie is a “key growth driver” for enterprise sales. She wrote that Microsoft had been “foundational” but had also “limited our ability” to meet some customers where they already buy cloud services. (cnbc.com) The customer issue is Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Web Services’ marketplace for artificial intelligence models. Dresser said many companies want to buy OpenAI models through Bedrock instead of moving workloads onto Microsoft Azure. (geekwire.com) Amazon and OpenAI announced that broader partnership on February 27, 2026. The companies said Amazon would invest up to $50 billion, starting with $15 billion upfront and another $35 billion if conditions are met. (openai.com) That deal changed a relationship that had run through Microsoft since 2019. Microsoft and OpenAI said on October 28, 2025, that they had signed a new definitive agreement for the “next phase” of their partnership, even as OpenAI gained more room to work with other infrastructure providers. (openai.com) The tension now is over distribution as much as computing power. Microsoft Azure has been the main cloud home for OpenAI, but Amazon Web Services controls a large share of enterprise cloud spending and already sells artificial intelligence services to companies that may not want to standardize on Microsoft. (openai.com) Microsoft is also weighing its legal options. Reuters reported on March 18 that Microsoft was considering action over the Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal because it could conflict with OpenAI’s exclusive cloud commitments to Azure. (reuters.com) Microsoft has not publicly broken with OpenAI. In the March 18 Reuters report, the company said it remained confident OpenAI would follow its contractual obligations while talks continued. (reuters.com) The money at stake is large on both sides. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, and Amazon is now offering a second giant balance sheet, a second cloud channel, and a second enterprise sales machine. (cnbc.com) OpenAI’s message to staff is that the company wants both: Microsoft for a long-running strategic alliance, Amazon for wider access to customers already buying through Amazon Web Services. Whether those two positions can coexist will depend on the contracts they signed and the talks still underway. (cnbc.com)