OpenAI's AWS deal may undermine Microsoft's Azure exclusivity rights

Microsoft fears OpenAI's AWS deal may violate Azure exclusivity contract.

"We are confident that OpenAI understands and respects the importance of living up to [its] legal obligation," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Information. A statement that sounds less like confidence and more like a warning.

Microsoft holds the exclusive rights to sell OpenAI's models directly to cloud customers through its Azure platform. But OpenAI and AWS are planning a new product, what they call a "stateful runtime environment," that runs OpenAI models entirely on AWS infrastructure without relying on the Microsoft-hosted versions.

AWS doesn't intend to sell model APIs directly but rather offer tools for developing custom AI applications, effectively sidestepping the contractual exclusivity on a technical level.