OpenAI internal memo exposed: Microsoft "restricted" our business expansion, Amazon is the new way out

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OpenAI acknowledges the limitations of its long-term partnership with Microsoft and regards Amazon Web Services as a key channel for breaking into the enterprise market.

According to a memorandum obtained by CNBC, OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser sent an internal message to all employees last Sunday, specifically naming the Microsoft partnership as a constraint on expanding enterprise business.

She wrote: "Our partnership with Microsoft has been foundational to our success, but it also limits our ability to engage with enterprise clients—because for many enterprises, they are on Amazon's Bedrock cloud platform."

Dresser also revealed that since OpenAI announced its strategic partnership with Amazon at the end of February this year, inbound demand from enterprise clients has been "frankly, astonishing".

Cracks in Microsoft Relationship, Amazon Becomes New Fulcrum

OpenAI and Microsoft still publicly define their partnership as a "core strategic relationship," but internal cracks are increasingly surfacing. In mid-2024, Microsoft listed OpenAI as a competitor in its annual report, alongside Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta.

At the same time, OpenAI has gradually begun to distribute its computing needs across CoreWeave, Google, Oracle, and other cloud service providers; Microsoft has started public testing of its own AI models to strengthen its consumer-facing Copilot assistant.

Against this backdrop, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is offering enterprise clients access to mainstream AI models, including those from OpenAI, on its Bedrock platform, providing OpenAI with a new channel to reach broader enterprise users.

In the memorandum, Dresser described the enterprise demand for this platform as "astonishing" growth since the partnership was announced, positioning this collaboration as a core driver of enterprise business expansion.

Enterprise Market Warfare: Breaking Out Under Pressure from Claude

The competitive landscape of the enterprise market is the immediate context for Dresser’s memo. At last week’s HumanX AI industry conference in San Francisco, Anthropic’s Claude model was the hottest topic.

Glean CEO Arvind Jain described this phenomenon as "Claude fever," calling it "almost a religion, that’s the level of fanaticism."

In response to the pressure, Dresser struck back in her memo, claiming Anthropic’s strategy is built on "fear, restriction, and the idea that a select few elites should control AI," and pointing out its strategic mistake in "failing to secure adequate computing power."

In an investor memorandum released last Thursday, OpenAI said Anthropic "operates on a visibly smaller curve," while OpenAI’s own compute capacity ramp-up "is fundamentally ahead and the gap is widening."

IPO Prospects Accelerate Commercial Layout

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are actively preparing for IPOs as early as this year, and enterprise market performance is crucial to each company's valuation narrative. Large-scale enterprise investment in AI has significantly depressed the valuations of listed software companies, making them look increasingly vulnerable.

OpenAI was valued above $850 billion in its latest funding round at the end of March; Anthropic, in a round one month prior, was valued at $380 billion.

On the execution side, OpenAI hired Dresser as Chief Revenue Officer in December last year. She previously served as CEO of Slack and held long-term positions at Salesforce. Recently, Dresser further expanded her responsibilities, taking charge of business affairs previously handled by Brad Lightcap, who has moved to a new "special projects" role.

At the end of her memo, Dresser wrote that the market can sometimes be "noisy, volatile, and distracting," and encouraged employees to focus on deep engagement with clients. Her closing was concise and powerful: "The market is right in front of us—let’s take action."

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