OpenAI gains freedom from Azure: Microsoft rewrites contract with key partner

Microsoft and OpenAI have rewritten the terms of their long-standing partnership — and did so surprisingly peacefully. The main change: OpenAI can now sell models and services through any cloud platforms, not just Azure.

How the deal changed

The Microsoft and OpenAI partnership has existed since 2019. Over these years, Microsoft invested in the company, by various estimates, more than $13 billion — and in exchange received exclusive access to its technologies. The key condition: OpenAI's flagship models were distributed to corporate clients exclusively through Azure. If a company wanted to work with GPT-4, it was welcome on Azure. Neither Google Cloud nor AWS nor any other provider could offer these models directly. The updated contract removes this restriction. Just a day after the announcement, OpenAI signed an agreement with AWS — a demonstrative signal to the market that the rules of the game have changed.

What is known about the terms of the new contract:

• OpenAI can sell APIs and products through any providers — AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle and others
• Microsoft retains rights to use OpenAI's technologies in its products: Copilot, Office 365, Windows
• Microsoft receives the status of "priority partner" — advantage under equal conditions
• Financial terms and investment stakes were revised in favor of greater OpenAI independence
• Infrastructure commitments were reworked taking into account the Stargate project

Why the parting went smoothly

The history of Microsoft and OpenAI relations was marked by serious crises. The most prominent — November 2023, when the board of directors fired CEO Sam Altman, and company employees massively threatened to follow him to Microsoft. The crisis exposed deep contradictions in governance and disagreements with the largest investor.

This was compounded by disputes over the pace of data center construction, disagreements over control of monetization, and competition for computing resources. Many observers expected a painful rupture: lawsuits, public accusations, leaks. But negotiations ended quietly.

Both sides got what they needed. Microsoft managed over five years to deeply embed AI technologies across its entire product portfolio — from Windows Copilot to Azure AI Foundry. Dependence on the exclusive contract had become significantly lower.

OpenAI, for its part, finally obtained the operational freedom it had long lacked.

"This partnership has evolved along with the industry,"

Microsoft commented.

What OpenAI gains

For OpenAI, the new status is not simply a commercial maneuver. The company is undergoing a major transformation: transition from nonprofit to for-profit structure, preparation for possible IPO, realization of the Stargate project jointly with SoftBank and Oracle at $500 billion. All this requires complete operational independence and freedom to choose infrastructure. Attachment to a single cloud provider created a real barrier in negotiations with corporate clients. Companies that wanted to use GPT-4o or o1 in production were effectively forced to agree to Azure. Now OpenAI can compete for corporate budgets directly — and cooperation with AWS already shows how this will work in practice.

What this means

The Azure monopoly on access to leading OpenAI models has been eliminated. Competition between cloud providers for AI workloads becomes truly open: Google Cloud and AWS get a real chance to become key OpenAI partners. For business, this is a signal: the choice of infrastructure for AI is no longer determined by a single exclusive contract at the board level.