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The waters have stirred a lot in less than 48 hours for OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon. And Sam Altman’s company has renegotiated its agreement with Microsoft, the AGI clause has been removed and has launched a new alliance with AWS. Exclusives don’t rule in the age of AI, technology does. circular financing.

Another twist. For years, Microsoft has been practically the only way for other companies to access OpenAI technology in the cloud. That ended this week through a deep renegotiation of the agreement between both companies. The next day, OpenAI It was already on Amazon Web Services and the move marks the beginning of a new stage in which OpenAI wants to be everywhere, not just in Azure.

How we got here. It is worth breaking down this pifostio to get the general picture of how things are now:

• 2019:Microsoft invested 1 billion dollars initials in OpenAI and became its exclusive computing provider. Over time, the total investment would exceed 13 billion.
• 2023: The launch of ChatGPT made OpenAI the benchmark for AI. With that new scale Frictions also camebecause if he wanted to meet demand he needed more computing than Microsoft could or wanted to provide.
• 2025: OpenAI restructured its legal form to become a for-profit company. Microsoft gave its approval, but the deal remained tense. According to informed According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI even considered going to antitrust regulators to get out of the contract.
• What’s now: New agreement. End of exclusivity. Arrival at AWS.

The new terms of the agreement. Both companies have decided turn your relationship into an open marriage:

• Licenses: Microsoft retains access to OpenAI models until 2032, but no longer exclusively. Any other provider can access them as well.
• Revenue sharing: OpenAI will continue to pay a portion of its revenue to Microsoft until 2030, with a maximum limit. Microsoft stops paying a portion of its revenue to OpenAI.
• Cloud Priority: Azure remains the first destination for OpenAI products, unless Microsoft is unable or unwilling to support it. From there, OpenAI can go to any provider.
• AGI clause removed: The mechanism that conditioned the agreement on reaching the “general artificial intelligence“. In this way, if at any point this goal is declared as achieved, there will no longer be contractual consequences between both companies.

The AGI thing, yes that. The original agreement between both companies included a clause that determined what would happen if OpenAI achieved the so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI), a concept without a consensus definition in the industry that refers to the state in which systems end up being as capable as the human brain, so that we understand each other.

Under the previous terms of the agreement, that milestone could have modified the agreement or interrupted payments. According to counted WSJ, the debate over when and how to declare that condition has been a source of tension for months between both sides. With the new agreement, that language disappears completely: payments will continue until 2030 “regardless of OpenAI’s technological progress,” in words from Microsoft.

Arrival on Amazon. Just one day after the announcement with Microsoft, OpenAI presented with Amazon your expansion to AWS. OpenAI models (including GPT-5.5) will be available through Amazon Bedrock, Amazon’s AI application development service. They also arrive Codexthe OpenAI scheduling agent, and a new service called Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents, designed to create enterprise autonomous AI agents.

“This is what our clients have been asking us for a long time,” counted Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, at the launch event in San Francisco. Sam Altman joined the same act through a recorded video, and it makes sense: he was across the bay, in Oakland, where it began the trial that pits OpenAI against Elon Muskco-founder of the company.

Circular financing. The agreement with AWS does not come out of nowhere. Last November, OpenAI announced a $38 billion commitment with Amazon Web Services. Three months later, Amazon announced an investment of 50 billion in OpenAIwhich in return committed to spending $100 billion on AWS over the next eight years and using Amazon’s Trainium chips to train its models.

The renegotiation with Microsoft was, in that context, a knot waiting to be untied. And according to counted Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s chief revenue officer, said in an internal memo that the relationship with Microsoft had been key but had also “limited OpenAI’s ability to reach businesses where they are.”

The move also benefits Amazon. So far, AWS depended mainly on Anthropic to offer competitive models. Having full access to OpenAI products significantly expands your catalog. According to ReutersAWS AI services already generate more than $15 billion in annualized revenue.

What Microsoft wins. The Redmond company does not lose out from the new agreement, although it does give ground. It retains access to OpenAI models until 2032, remains a relevant shareholder in the startup and obtains greater certainty about the income it will receive until 2030. In addition, Microsoft has been building its own technological independence for some time: it has developed its own models, and according to TechCrunch, works at an agent based in ClaudeAnthropic’s model and direct rival to OpenAI.

What’s coming now. OpenAI prepares its IPOexpectedly this year. To do this, it needs to show that it can grow in the business market, and that means being present in the infrastructures that large companies already use. Azure is one of them; AWS, another. Opening up to Google (which is also a candidate as a new cloud partner) could be the next step.

Cover image | TechCrunch

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