Here’s how the new Microsoft and OpenAI deal breaks down

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Tech Close Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Tech AI Close AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All AI Microsoft Close Microsoft Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Follow Follow See All Microsoft Here’s how the new Microsoft and OpenAI deal breaks down Microsoft and OpenAI split, but somehow kept it together. Microsoft and OpenAI split, but somehow kept it together. by Tom Warren Close Tom Warren Senior Correspondent Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

Follow Follow See All by Tom Warren Apr 30, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC Link Share Gift Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Tom Warren Close Tom Warren Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Tom Warren is a senior correspondent and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI has always been complicated, so I expected the close partnership-turned-situationship to end in tears.

After all, executive disagreements, rearranged contracts, and frustrations over AI infrastructure have all regularly been part of the partnership, creating plenty of tension along the way. But against all odds, Microsoft and OpenAI divorced this week in a way that looks strangely amicable. Microsoft announced the updates to its long-standing OpenAI deal on Monday, with the most important change allowing OpenAI to make its products and services available across all cloud providers.

A day later, OpenAI announced it was bringing its latest AI models, Codex, and other tools to AWS — Microsoft’s biggest cloud rival. It’s a move that seemed likely ever since Amazon announced its $50 billion deal with OpenAI earlier this year, which was originally framed as a deal to make AWS a third-party provider of OpenAI Frontier, together with some collaborative work on custom models for Alexa. Microsoft wasn’t happy about OpenAI cutting a deal with its main rival, and it was weighing legal action ahead of this renegotiation.

Industry Implications

Amazon and OpenAI clearly wanted a closer partnership, especially as Amazon is playing catch-up in the AI market and trying to push agents to businesses through its Bedrock service. OpenAI told its employees earlier this month that its deal with Microsoft “has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock. As much as Microsoft will hate seeing OpenAI models being available to Amazon, it now stands to benefit from OpenAI cozying up to its rival.

Sources tell me that as part of the amended agreement, Microsoft will continue to receive 20 percent of the revenue OpenAI earns for ChatGPT and the AI startup’s API platform.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.