OpenAI resolves Microsoft’s legal challenge over its $50B Amazon deal

On Monday, Microsoft and OpenAI announced that they would also, they also discussed the contract build these two companies. Despite some opinions on X that put it as a victory for the creator of ChatGPT over the Windows giant, both sides are leaving victorious.

Most importantly, the new statement resolves a problem that has been on OpenAI’s agenda since its signing up to $ 50 billion contract and Amazon.

With this new agreement, instead of Microsoft having access to all OpenAI assets and IP until the magical day when OpenAI develops AGI, its agreement has a fixed term. The agreement gives Microsoft a non-exclusive license to OpenAI IP for brands and products until 2032.

The two companies are still calling Microsoft OpenAI’s “primary cloud partner”, which means that most of OpenAI’s cloud will be served by Azure for the six years that the agreement is in effect, even as OpenAI rushes to build its own data center with other partners. In OctoberOpenAI agreed to buy Microsoft’s $250 billion cloud computing giant. This line is a message to Microsoft owners that OpenAI will remain a major Azure customer.

OpenAI products will ship “first on Azure, unless Microsoft can’t afford it and chooses not to support the requirements,” the company says. But, in opposition, “OpenAI can now send all its products to customers on any type of cloud provider.”

Again, “first” is not clearly defined in this announcement, whether this means it will be limited to Azure for a short period of time or simply that Microsoft will also be among the vendors carrying the latest OpenAI products.

But the most important part this time: it eliminates the possibility that Microsoft can play OpenAI in the AI ​​lab. dealing with Amazon.

Reiterating the challenge: In February, OpenAI announced that Amazon is investing $50 billion in prototype development, with an initial investment of $15 billion and another $35 billion “in the coming months when certain conditions are met,” the company said, without specifying what it was.

In exchange, OpenAI agreed to develop “long-term technology” on AWS Bedrock (an AWS service that provides a variety of AI models and services). Running time is a technology that supports AI agents, allowing them to remember tasks and events for a long time.

OpenAI also promised that AWS will have exclusive rights to use OpenAI’s new Frontier development tool. And there is the wipe.

OpenAI’s initial agreement with Microsoft prevented OpenAI from selling Frontier exclusively on AWS, and possibly preventing AWS from selling at all.

Although Microsoft has previously agreed that OpenAI will run some selected products, such as ChatGPT clients, for other cloud providers, it has also retained the rights to any OpenAI products available via API, such as Frontier.

In fact, on the same day that OpenAI announced its AWS partnership, Microsoft publicly contradicted AWS’s statement, writing (emphasis on Microsoft):

“Microsoft retains its exclusive license and intellectual property rights to OpenAI’s models and products. … Azure is still the only cloud provider of unlimited OpenAI APIs. … Any unlimited API calls to OpenAI models that result from collaboration between OpenAI and a third party – including Amazon – can be executed on Azure. … OpenAI’s first products, including Frontier, will continue to be hosted on Azure.“

Microsoft also emphasized that its terms were valid until OpenAI acquired AGI. The The Financial Times reported that Microsoft decided to take legal action if it should be followed by this.

Therefore, the new agreement removes Microsoft’s exclusive rights and solves AWS’ legal problem. In a post on X, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy celebrated the unionadding that it means OpenAI versions will be available to customers on AWS Bedrock.

Very exciting announcement from OpenAI this morning. We’re excited to make OpenAI models available directly to customers on Bedrock in the coming weeks, along with the upcoming Stateful Runtime Environment. With this, builders will have more choice to choose the right…

— Andy Jassy (@ajassy) April 27, 2026

While this partnership is good for OpenAI, Microsoft walked away with a win, too. The new agreement now allows Microsoft to stop paying a portion of the revenue to OpenAI, while OpenAI will continue to pay a portion of the revenue to Microsoft until 2030, although this has a cap.

It’s hard to say how much money Microsoft will get, but it’s probably in the billions. Last quarter, Microsoft said the same thing it made $7.5 billion in one quarter from his investment in OpenAI.

The reason is that Microsoft is still the largest shareholder in OpenAI, which has about 27 percent of the company’s profit, it said in October. It’s financially rewarding for OpenAI to grow, despite the sales it makes on AWS.

The downside is that Microsoft loses any other cloud services it might sell because of its exclusive partnership with OpenAI.

This may not be difficult. Just as OpenAI has been courting Microsoft’s biggest competitors, Microsoft has a new, gentler relationship with its OpenAI partner. Anthropic for the cloud giant to use its Claude AI to generate energy.

The biggest winners here are enterprises, who can choose their own models and clouds while the giants compete with each other to serve them.

Here’s a timeline of the latest developments in Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI.

Men October, Microsoft and OpenAI have announced a new partnership helping OpenAI deal with Elon Musk’s lawsuit over its architecture that gives OpenAI the ability to run things that aren’t available through an API on other clouds.

In November, OpenAI and Amazon signing their first multi-year contract, how OpenAI forms a $38 billion AWS cloud contract.

In February, Amazon announced $50 billion investment in OpenAIwhile waiting for “other conditions” including the development of special technology and cooperation on the Frontier and high technology. On the same day, Microsoft they object that AWS will have its own technology.

In MarchFT they publish that Microsoft is considering legal action.

In April, OpenAI and Microsoft announce new products, which includes the last calendar day of their exclusive agreement and allows OpenAI to run all of its products on other clouds. Microsoft no longer has to pay a share of OpenAI’s revenue. Microsoft remains the largest shareholder in OpenAI.