It feels like the world’s longest and most public divorce: In late April, Microsoft and OpenAI once again renegotiated the slow-motion breakup that has been playing out between the two over the last several years.
At first glance, it looks like a win-win. In the broadest terms, OpenAI gets more freedom to set its own course — it can sell its models to Microsoft competitors such as Amazon and Google, for example — while Microsoft gets a better revenue deal and first rights to the newest OpenAI technologies into the next decade.
But in truth, one company got a better deal than the other. Who came out ahead? To figure that out, we first need to look at the most important details of the new agreement.
Keep in mind that this new agreement didn’t arise from thin air. It’s a direct result of Microsoft’s threats in March to sue OpenAI when inked a $50 billion deal with Amazon that makes the latter company the only third-party cloud provider for OpenAI’s enterprise platform for building and running AI agents.
After the Amazon-OpenAI contract was signed, Microsoft claimed it violated its exclusive cloud agreement with OpenAI. A Microsoft source told the Financial Times, “We know our contract. We will sue them if they breach it. If Amazon and OpenAI want to take a bet on the creativity of their contractual lawyers, I would back us, not them.”
