OpenAI and Microsoft announced on April 27, 2026, a sweeping overhaul of their partnership agreement, dismantling the exclusivity arrangement that had defined the commercial artificial intelligence era since 2019 and replacing it with a more flexible, time-limited structure that gives both companies significantly greater freedom to pursue relationships with rivals.

According to Microsoft’s official blog, Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and OpenAI products will continue to ship first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot or chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.4

However, OpenAI can now serve all of its products to customers across any cloud provider, ending the exclusivity that had previously prevented the company from fully serving customers on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

According to Reuters, the reworked agreement retains Microsoft as OpenAI’s primary cloud partner with a license to the startup’s intellectual property through 2032.

The restructuring follows a series of earlier changes to the partnership in October 2025, when OpenAI completed a recapitalization and committed to spending $250 billion on Microsoft Azure cloud services.

The latest overhaul goes significantly further, addressing the legal tension that had emerged between the two companies following OpenAI’s announcement of a major new investment deal with Amazon.

Amazon agreed in February 2026 to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, with AWS also set to serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI’s enterprise platform Frontier.

This created a conflict with OpenAI’s existing agreement with Microsoft, which had prevented OpenAI from granting AWS exclusive access to certain products. The same day OpenAI announced its AWS deal, Microsoft publicly disputed the AWS-exclusive terms, and according to Reuters, Microsoft was subsequently considering legal action before the two companies reached the revised agreement announced on Monday.

OpenAI’s revenue chief Denise Dresser had told staff in an internal memo earlier this month that the Microsoft partnership had limited the company’s ability to meet enterprises where they are.

The new agreement resolves this tension by formally ending the exclusivity and providing both sides with clearly defined obligations and a specific calendar-based timeline rather than the milestone-based triggers of the original deal.

The restructuring involves significant financial changes for both parties. Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI for products accessed through Azure. Revenue share payments from OpenAI to Microsoft will continue through 2030 at the same percentage but are now subject to a total cap, independent of OpenAI’s technology progress.

The cap amount has not been publicly disclosed. Microsoft’s license to OpenAI’s intellectual property for models and products through 2032 will now be non-exclusive, and Microsoft continues to participate directly in OpenAI’s growth as a major shareholder.

Andy Jassy Amazon CEO, responded to the announcement on X, writing that AWS would make OpenAI’s models available directly to customers on its Bedrock service within weeks. Reuters also reported that Google is reviewing the revised deal terms to assess what partnerships might now be possible between Google Cloud and OpenAI under the new structure.

Despite the significant structural changes, both companies emphasised that their collaborative work remains ambitious. “While this amendment simplifies the partnership, the work we’re doing together remains ambitious. From scaling gigawatts of new datacenter capacity, to collaborating on next-generation silicon, to applying AI to advance cybersecurity, and more, we’re excited to keep partnering to advance and scale AI for people and organisations around the world,” Microsoft wrote in its official statement.