Unbind from Microsoft, embrace Amazon--Why does OpenAI want to do this?

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OpenAI has officially lifted its long-term exclusive cloud service partnership with Microsoft by restructuring their collaboration agreement, instead embracing other cloud platforms such as Amazon, aiming to break infrastructure limitations and fully compete for the enterprise market.

According to previous reports by WallstreetCN, on Monday, Microsoft and OpenAI announced they had revised their cooperation agreement. Key terms include that Microsoft will stop paying OpenAI revenue shares, and its license to OpenAI's model intellectual property has changed from exclusive to non-exclusive. This historic loosening has directly shaken the market—Microsoft's stock price once plunged nearly 4% pre-market, then recovered part of the losses, while Amazon shares rose about 1% on expectations of a favorable multi-cloud strategy.

On the same day, Amazon announced it had reached an agreement to bring OpenAI to its Amazon Web Services cloud platform, which will launch new services specifically designed to run AI agents.

For OpenAI, embracing platforms like Amazon is a key step in catching up with competitor Anthropic and breaking the bottleneck in enterprise business growth. Previously, exclusive terms with Microsoft Azure prevented some enterprise clients—unwilling to migrate cloud platforms—from accessing OpenAI. The release of the binding agreement allows OpenAI to cater to the current industry trend of multi-cloud deployment and reactivate vast potential demand.

Although OpenAI has gained crucial operational autonomy and is eager to expand its revenue footprint through Amazon Web Services (AWS), it still faces severe commercial challenges in the multi-cloud era, as enterprise clients have in recent years switched to other highly competitive AI models.

Exclusive Agreement Lifted, Reshaping the Cloud Services Value Chain

This revised agreement marks a major restructuring of the financial relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.

Under the new terms, Microsoft will no longer pay OpenAI a revenue share, eliminating a fixed cost for Microsoft. However, as a trade-off, Microsoft loses its moat advantage in AI infrastructure, as its exclusive IP access is broken. At the same time, reverse revenue sharing from OpenAI to Microsoft will continue until 2030, maintaining the original proportion but subject to a cap on the total amount.

At the equity level, after OpenAI’s profit-oriented restructuring last year, Microsoft gained a 27% stake and will remain a major shareholder in its future growth. According to reports, the two sides negotiated for months last year on vague AGI terms in the agreement. The new agreement removes the mechanism under which “Microsoft’s exclusive access is terminated when AGI threshold is reached,” eliminating a major uncertainty in the relationship. The market’s interpretation of this revision reflects cautious assessment of whether Microsoft can maintain its core position, while Amazon is widely expected to benefit directly from the move to a non-exclusive model.

Embracing Amazon, Stepping Up the Battle for Enterprise Market Share

OpenAI’s expansion to AWS is essentially a necessary choice to meet the growing demand for computing power and to cope with intense competition in the enterprise market.

Amazon previously announced a preliminary investment of $15 billion in OpenAI, planning to launch OpenAI technology with a “stateful” runtime environment through AWS Bedrock. This environment can retain interaction details to support more continuous use. AWS will also provide OpenAI Frontier to help enterprises deploy AI assistants.

OpenAI executives said in a memo that market demand for AWS’s new product is “staggering.” An OpenAI spokesperson also pointed out that enterprise customers want solutions that drive actual investment returns, and the new product will enable companies to natively deploy agent workflows in Amazon Bedrock. To further promote this collaboration, AWS CEO Matt Garman and OpenAI executives plan to host an event for AWS customers on April 28, focusing on agent-type AI technologies.

OpenAI is currently racing to catch up with competitor Anthropic in the enterprise market. Disclosures show that Anthropic’s recent annualized revenue has reached $30 billion, slightly ahead of OpenAI. To this end, OpenAI leadership recently asked staff to reduce involvement in side projects and focus on winning more enterprise business.

Cool Client Response, Alternatives Have Built Barriers

Although Amazon is actively promoting the inclusion of OpenAI, some AWS clients have reacted indifferently.

In the three years since OpenAI ignited the AI boom, many enterprises have deeply relied on other models. Six companies or consultants working with AWS said they are satisfied with the economical options such as Anthropic and Amazon’s own model Nova available through Bedrock.

Adam Sandman, CEO of testing software company Inflectra, said, “If this had been announced a few years ago, it might have been important, but currently the real market focus is on Qwen and DeepSeek.” He emphasized that for many practical tasks such as coding, Claude’s performance is already superior.

Inflectra once had about 10% of clients using Microsoft Azure to access OpenAI, but now this proportion has dropped below 1%, with the vast majority returning to AWS’s Bedrock model hosting services.

Additionally, data control and cost-effectiveness have become major obstacles to clients switching to OpenAI.

Phil Christianson, Chief Product Officer of IT software company Xurrent, pointed out that transferring data to Microsoft Cloud conflicts with clients’ need to keep data in AWS. With the performance gap of frontline models narrowing, there is little motivation to switch platforms. Cris Daniluk, CEO of AWS consulting service Rhythmic Technologies, also noted that while the new runtime environment offers technical advantages, being forced to bind to OpenAI products is sometimes troubling. As multi-cloud setups reveal advantages in reducing latency and optimizing performance, OpenAI still needs to prove its irreplaceable commercial value in order to regain a voice in a market already infiltrated by competitors.

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