GoKawiilGood morning,
As I noted yesterday, today’s Stratechery Interview is early in terms of my timing — Tuesday instead of Thursday — and late in terms of delivery — 1pm Eastern instead of 6am — because the topic was embargoed. That embargo created a bit of a weird situation for me over the last several days:
Last Friday I conducted the following interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AWS CEO Matt Garman about Bedrock Managed Agents, powered by OpenAI; naturally, one of my questions was about how this fit in with OpenAI’s deal with Microsoft giving Azure exclusive access to OpenAI models.
Late Sunday I heard through the grapevine that Microsoft would announce something Monday morning; I wondered if it might be a preemptive lawsuit!
On Monday Microsoft and OpenAI announced they had amended their agreement, allowing OpenAI to serve its products on other cloud providers, including AWS.
So here we are.
I think the Microsoft-OpenAI deal makes a lot of sense for both sides. Here are the bullet points of the new arrangement from Microsoft’s post:
Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure, unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities. OpenAI can now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider.
Microsoft will continue to have a license to OpenAI IP for models and products through 2032. Microsoft’s license will now be non-exclusive.
Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI.
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