REDMOND: Microsoft and OpenAI said on April 27 they had revised the terms of their long-running partnership, ending Microsoft’s exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s models and allowing the creator of ChatGPT to offer its products across any cloud provider. The companies said Microsoft will remain OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and that OpenAI products will ship first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot or chooses not to support the required capabilities. Microsoft will also keep a non-exclusive license to OpenAI models and products through 2032.
The new terms also changed how money will flow between the companies. Microsoft said it will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI, while revenue share payments from OpenAI to Microsoft will continue through 2030 at the same percentage as before but with a total cap. The companies also removed an earlier provision that tied some payments and rights to OpenAI’s technology progress, replacing it with a structure that is no longer linked to that milestone and applies under the updated contract.
The partnership dates back to 2019 and became one of the central commercial alliances in artificial intelligence after Microsoft invested billions of dollars and integrated OpenAI technology into Azure and its software products. Microsoft has invested about $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, and the relationship helped scale the computing infrastructure behind OpenAI’s models as ChatGPT expanded into a global consumer and enterprise platform. Microsoft said it continues to participate directly in OpenAI’s growth as a major shareholder.
OpenAI Cloud Access Broadens
The latest rewrite followed a series of earlier adjustments over the past year. In January 2025, Microsoft changed the exclusivity on new computing capacity to a right of first refusal after OpenAI announced the Stargate infrastructure project with SoftBank Group and Oracle. Microsoft said at the time that OpenAI had made a new large Azure commitment and that it had approved additional capacity for research and model training, while leaving Azure at the center of the partnership’s operating framework.
In September 2025, the companies signed a non-binding agreement for new relationship terms that would let OpenAI move ahead with restructuring into a for-profit company. A subsequent October 2025 deal kept the companies tied together until at least 2032 and preserved Microsoft’s access to OpenAI technology under revised governance and commercial arrangements. The April 2026 agreement now sets out the current framework, including non-exclusive licensing, capped revenue sharing through 2030 and continued Azure priority for OpenAI products.
Current Terms Replace Exclusivity
The revised terms also formalize OpenAI’s ability to work more broadly across the cloud market. OpenAI said it can now serve all of its products to customers across any cloud provider, while Microsoft said Azure remains the first destination for OpenAI launches unless the platform cannot meet the needed capabilities. OpenAI has already pursued additional cloud arrangements with Oracle and Google, and Amazon has said OpenAI models will soon become available through Amazon Web Services under the broader multi-cloud approach.
For Microsoft, the agreement preserves access to OpenAI intellectual property, products and models through 2032 while ending exclusivity that once defined the alliance. For OpenAI, the deal confirms room to distribute its technology more widely while maintaining Azure as its primary cloud relationship. Together, the changes leave Microsoft and OpenAI commercially linked under a contract that is more open than the one that shaped the first phase of large-scale generative AI expansion. – By Content Syndication Services.