On Monday, Microsoft and OpenAI renegotiated and revised their cooperation agreement. Although some views on social platform Crucially, the new cooperation terms resolve major hidden dangers that have long been unresolved since OpenAI finalized its Amazon cooperation agreement of up to $50 billion.
According to the new agreement, Microsoft will no longer permanently monopolize all OpenAI products and intellectual property until the former develops general artificial intelligence (AGI); the cooperation between the two parties will have a clear termination period from then on. The contract stipulates that Microsoft will hold a non-exclusive license to the intellectual property rights of OpenAI models and related products until 2032.
Both parties still define Microsoft as OpenAI's primary cloud service provider. This means that in the next six years of cooperation, even if OpenAI is working with multiple partners to build its own data center, most of its cloud computing business will still rely on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. In October this year, OpenAI finalized the purchase of additional Microsoft cloud services worth US$250 billion. This move also sends a clear signal to Microsoft shareholders: OpenAI is still Azure's top core customer.
The two companies said that OpenAI's products will be launched on the Azure platform first, unless Microsoft is unable and has no intention of providing supporting technical support. The most critical breakthrough is that OpenAI can now fully deliver all its products to customers of any cloud service provider.
This announcement did not clearly define the specific meaning of "priority launch" - whether it will be exclusively operated by Azure for a period of time, or whether it only means that Microsoft will give priority to the latest OpenAI products, there is no clear conclusion yet.
But the core significance of this revision of the terms is that it completely eliminates the possibility of Microsoft launching a lawsuit due to OpenAI’s hand in hand with Amazon.
Background combing
In February this year, OpenAI officially announced that Amazon would invest up to US$50 billion in it, of which US$15 billion will be invested in the first phase, and the remaining US$35 billion will be invested in batches "after certain conditions are met in the next few months." However, the two parties did not clearly state the additional conditions.
As consideration for the cooperation, OpenAI agreed to jointly develop stateful runtime technology based on the Bedrock service of Amazon Cloud (AWS). This technology is the core support of intelligent AI agents, allowing artificial intelligence to long-term memory of task instructions and dialogue context.
At the same time, OpenAI promised that Amazon Cloud will exclusively operate its new intelligent agent development tool Frontier, and this clause is the trigger of the conflict between the two parties.
The original cooperation agreement between OpenAI and Microsoft contained clear restrictions: it prohibits the Frontier tool from being exclusively operated by Amazon cloud, and may even completely prohibit Amazon from listing the product.
Previously, although Microsoft allowed OpenAI to deploy C-end consumer products such as ChatGPT on third-party cloud platforms, it firmly held the exclusive rights to all OpenAI products called through API interfaces, and Frontier was within this restriction.
On the same day that OpenAI officially announced its cooperation with Amazon, Microsoft publicly denied Amazon’s exclusive operating rights and emphasized:
Microsoft continues to retain the exclusive licensing and use rights to OpenAI’s full range of model and product intellectual property rights. The stateless OpenAI interface service will be provided exclusively by Azure. Any stateless interface call requirements arising from cooperation between OpenAI and third parties such as Amazon must be hosted on the Azure platform. OpenAI’s self-developed products, including Frontier, will continue to run exclusively on Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft also emphasized that the above-mentioned exclusivity terms will remain in effect until OpenAI develops general artificial intelligence.
The new cooperation agreement officially abolishes Microsoft’s exclusive privileges and completely resolves the legal crisis faced by OpenAI in its cooperation with Amazon. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy posted a congratulatory post on social platform
OpenAI’s announcement this morning is significant. In the next few weeks, we will launch the full range of OpenAI models directly to customers on the Bedrock platform, and simultaneously launch a new stateful runtime environment. With this, developers will have more choices and can freely adapt to the optimal technical solution.
——Andy Jassy, April 27, 2026
This agreement has significant benefits for OpenAI, and Microsoft has also gained multiple benefits:
The new agreement cancels Microsoft's obligation to pay revenue sharing to OpenAI; on the other hand, OpenAI still needs to pay revenue sharing to Microsoft before 2030, and the share ratio has been capped.
The exact amount of revenue has not been disclosed, but it is estimated to bring billions of dollars in revenue to Microsoft every year. Microsoft's last quarterly financial report showed that it earned US$7.5 billion in revenue in a single quarter just from its investment in OpenAI.
In addition, Microsoft remains the core major shareholder of OpenAI. According to its disclosure data in October, Microsoft holds approximately 27% of OpenAI’s profit-making entity. Even if OpenAI operates on Amazon's cloud, Microsoft will continue to profit from its overall business growth.
Of course, Microsoft also paid a price: it lost the exclusive cooperation bonus and could no longer rely on the exclusive agreement to lock in all OpenAI's cloud computing orders.
However, this impact is relatively limited. On the one hand, OpenAI is actively wooing competing products from Microsoft's major cloud businesses. On the other hand, Microsoft has also been deeply tied to OpenAI's number one competitor, Anthropic, and relies on the latter's Claude artificial intelligence to develop self-developed intelligent agent products.
The biggest beneficiaries of this structural adjustment are major corporate customers around the world. Technology giants compete with each other and loosen technical barriers. Enterprises can freely choose suitable AI models and cloud service platforms and customize digital solutions independently.
Microsoft×OpenAI key event timeline
October: The two parties signed a supplementary agreement to help OpenAI respond to the equity structure lawsuit initiated by Musk and allow non-interface products to be deployed on third-party cloud platforms;
November: OpenAI signed a multi-year cooperation agreement with Amazon and finalized Amazon cloud purchase orders totaling US$380 billion;
February: Amazon officially announced an investment of up to US$50 billion in OpenAI, with additional terms for exclusive cooperation with Frontier tools and stateful technology; on the same day, Microsoft publicly vetoed Amazon's exclusive rights;
March: Microsoft is considering legal action;
April: Microsoft and OpenAI reached a new cooperation agreement, officially setting a deadline for exclusive cooperation and fully liberalizing multi-cloud deployment; Microsoft terminated revenue sharing payments while retaining OpenAI's core shareholder status.