Source: Axios
OpenAI renegotiated its foundational partnership to permit multi-cloud deployment, ending Microsoft's exclusive claim on its inference infrastructure and opening Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud as distribution channels for GPT models. Cloud vendor lock-in had been OpenAI's primary lever for securing massive capital commitments from Microsoft ($13B+); fragmenting that arrangement reduces OpenAI's negotiating power while forcing Microsoft to justify its investment through software integration rather than infrastructure control. The shift reflects a recognition that OpenAI's model weights, not compute capacity, are the actual moat—a change that alters the unit economics of the generative AI supply chain.