‘While this amendment simplifies the partnership, the work we’re doing together remains ambitious,’ Microsoft and OpenAI said in statements Monday.
Microsoft and OpenAI have revised their partnership so that Microsoft no longer pays a revenue share to the ChatGPT maker, Microsoft no longer has an exclusive license to OpenAI intellectual property and OpenAI can serve all products to customers across any cloud provider.
The revised deal, disclosed Monday in online posts by Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft and San Francisco-based OpenAI, also applies an unspecified total cap to OpenAI’s revenue share payments to Microsoft. The revised deal affirms that Microsoft is OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and OpenAI products ship first on Microsoft Azure unless Microsoft can’t and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.
“While this amendment simplifies the partnership, the work we’re doing together remains ambitious,” according to the companies’ posts. “From scaling gigawatts of new datacenter capacity, to collaborating on next-generation silicon, to applying AI to advance cybersecurity, and more, we’re excited to keep partnering to advance and scale AI for people and organizations around the world.”
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What’s Changing In The Microsoft–OpenAI Deal
CRN has reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI for comment.
Although Microsoft now has a non-exclusive license for OpenAI models, products and other IP, the license lasts through 2032. OpenAI’s revenue share payments to Microsoft will continue through 2030 and are unaffected by OpenAI’s technology progress, according to the companies’ posts.
The new agreement notes that Microsoft continues to act as a major OpenAI shareholder. Microsoft’s stake is valued at more than $135 billion, according to The New York Times.
The new deal is focused on benefitting customers and both companies through greater flexibility, certainty and broader AI benefits delivery, according to the companies’ posts.
Amit Kapur, chief AI and services transformation officer at Mumbai, India-based Tata Consultancy Services–No. 3 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500 and a rare partner of OpenAI–told CRN in an interview that OpenAI’s Codex tool is not only speeding up and expanding the scope of work companies like TCS can do in software engineering and software development life cycle, but aiding in other contexts as well.
“When you look at it as an element of a productivity tool or a coding tool or a coding assistant, then that would have led it only to be working with developers,” Kapur said. “But now you can say that it is actually going much beyond, and it can become an execution layer in a way that can take an idea and turn it into a workable code. So rather than just assisting developers for developer productivity, it is going a step beyond.”
Dawn Sizer, CEO and co-founder of 3rd Element Consulting–a Mechanicsburg, Pa.-based Microsoft solution provider and member of CRN’s 2026 MSP 500–told CRN in an interview that the new deal shows how AI is becoming agnostic and more complex for workplaces that want to be at the cutting edge of AI innovation and avoid AI-first competitors leaving them behind.
Managing vendor risk for customers and making popular AI products safe and secure for business users present opportunities for solution providers, Sizer said. But the work required can be complex, and AI is moving at a fast pace for just any channel partner to digest.
“Margins, licensing terms and data path are about to change, again,” Sizer said. “Unmanaged AI exposure is going to show up everywhere.”
Microsoft and OpenAI previously revised their partnership in October to allow, in part, Microsoft to independently pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI) alone or in partnership with third parties and extend Microsoft’s IP right for models and products through 2032–including models post-AGI.
OpenAI had been looking for greater independencefrom Microsoft in recent months, including signing a $38 billion deal with Microsoft cloud rival Amazon Web Services in November and reaching a $50 billion deal in February.
In March, The Financial Times reported that Microsoft considered suing Amazon and OpenAI over their $50 billion arrangement, alleging that the deal breached its exclusive cloud partnership with the AI upstart.
The deal also comes as OpenAI appears to be building out its own channel partner program, making moves like hiring former Google and Snowflake channel executive Colleen Kapase and naming solution provider giants Accenture, Capgemini, CGI, Cognizant, Infosys, PwC and TCS as partners to help scale its Codex product. Solution providers who are not OpenAI partners have told CRN that they see opportunities with Codex should OpenAI explore a broader channel strategy beyond working with large-sized solution providers.
