OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has quietly added Google Cloud as one of its official service providers, meaning Google will now help power the systems that run ChatGPT and other AI products.
This development was disclosed on OpenAI’s website in a list of what are called sub-processors, or companies that handle or process user data on OpenAI’s behalf.
For everyday users, it may not seem like a big deal. But behind the scenes, it is a major shift.
OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, has often been seen as a direct competitor to Google in the race to build and monetize artificial intelligence. Both companies have invested billions into AI and compete on everything, from chatbot performance to search engine dominance. Now, OpenAI is renting server space and computing power from the same company it is trying to beat.
Why This Is Happening
Earlier this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a series of public posts on X (formerly Twitter) admitting that the company was struggling with infrastructure. There were not enough graphics processing units—known as GPUs—to keep up with user demand. GPUs are the specialized chips that allow AI models like ChatGPT to operate at scale. They are expensive, hard to find, and mostly controlled by a few tech giants.
Altman put it bluntly in April: “We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges.”
He later added: “If anyone has GPU capacity in 100,000 chunks we can get ASAP, please call!”
working as fast we can to really get stuff humming; if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call! — Sam Altman (@sama) April 1, 2025
That was apparently not a joke.
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