OpenAI and Microsoft remove exclusive sales rights in revised deal
Microsoft's revised deal removes exclusive OpenAI model sales rights and caps OpenAI's revenue-share payments through 2030. Teams can now track direct AWS Bedrock availability when deciding where to buy and run OpenAI models.
TL;DR
- The Bloomberg summary in the evidence pool says Microsoft no longer has exclusive rights to sell OpenAI models, while OpenAI's own announcement says OpenAI can now serve products across any cloud provider.
- According to OpenAI's post, Microsoft stays OpenAI's primary cloud partner, but OpenAI's revenue-share payments are now capped through 2030, matching the term surfaced in the deal summary.
- The Hacker News discussion summary immediately zeroed in on the practical change for builders: OpenAI can sell through AWS instead of only Azure.
- One day later, Amazon's Bedrock announcement turned that theory into a concrete distribution change, with GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and Codex listed on Bedrock at OpenAI-matched pricing.
Microsoft's official post and OpenAI's matching statement both frame the reset as a simplification, but the useful detail is distribution. HN commenters immediately read the deal as an AWS opening, and Amazon's Bedrock post confirmed it almost immediately with named models, pricing parity, and AWS-commit eligibility.
Deal terms
OpenAI Breaks Free From Exclusive AI Pact With Microsoft
Microsoft and OpenAI have revised their partnership agreement to end Microsoft's exclusive rights to sell OpenAI's AI models. As part of the new deal, OpenAI gains the ability to offer its products across other cloud providers. In exchange, Microsoft will cease making revenue-share payments to OpenAI on products it resells. Additionally, OpenAI's ongoing revenue-share payments to Microsoft are now subject to a total cap and will continue through 2030, independent of OpenAI's progress toward artificial general intelligence. Microsoft maintains a non-exclusive license to OpenAI's intellectual property through 2032 and remains OpenAI's primary cloud partner.
The revised agreement removes Microsoft's exclusive model sales rights, ends Microsoft's revenue-share payments to OpenAI on products Microsoft resells, and keeps OpenAI paying Microsoft under a capped total through 2030, according to the deal summary.
The two official posts line up on the broad shape. Microsoft's version says Microsoft remains the primary cloud provider and keeps a non-exclusive IP license through 2032, while OpenAI's version says new API workloads are still first on Azure.
Bedrock
Discussion around Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal
Thread discussion highlights: - alexdoesstuff on deal terms and disclosure: It’s surprising that Microsoft doesn’t disclose more of the agreement to shareholders, especially the cap on OpenAI’s payments and what “primary cloud provider” or “first on Azure” actually mean in practice. - chasd00 on Azure vs AWS: This gives OpenAI the ability to go to AWS instead of exclusively on Azure. - conradkay on AWS Bedrock rollout: Andy Jassy said OpenAI's models will be available directly to customers on Bedrock in the coming weeks, giving builders more model choice.
In the thread, chasd00's cited comment reduced the whole thing to the engineer-facing consequence: OpenAI can go to AWS instead of staying exclusive to Azure. Another cited comment in the same discussion summary pointed to Andy Jassy saying OpenAI models would reach Bedrock in the coming weeks.
That happened fast. Amazon's Bedrock post said GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and Codex were coming to Bedrock with no extra fees over first-party pricing, and that usage would count toward AWS commitments.
Prior loosening
A useful wrinkle in the main HN thread is that several commenters argued the exclusivity had already been partially softened before this reset. The excerpted note from ignoramous's comment says Microsoft had already given up right of first refusal on compute in October 2025, except for API workloads.
That makes this week's change look less like a clean break and more like the formal end of the remaining commercial lockups: sales exclusivity, reciprocal revenue sharing, and the practical barrier to Bedrock distribution.