Microsoft and OpenAI Rewrite Their Deal: Exclusivity Out, AGI Clause Gone, Multicloud In
OpenAI and Microsoft tore up their original partnership Monday — exclusivity gone, the AGI revenue clause killed, multicloud unlocked. OpenAI keeps a $250B Azure spend commit through 2030; Microsoft retains an IP license through 2032 and a capped revenue share.
OpenAI and Microsoft on April 27 announced the most significant restructuring of their partnership since Microsoft's original $1B investment in 2019. The new contract ends Microsoft's cloud exclusivity, removes the controversial AGI revenue-sharing clause, and clears the way for OpenAI's $50 billion Amazon Web Services deal announced in February.
The Restructure
Under the amended agreement, OpenAI can now serve all its products across any cloud provider, with Azure remaining the "primary" partner only when Microsoft chooses to support required capabilities. The AGI clause — which previously gave OpenAI's board the right to declare AGI achieved and unilaterally terminate Microsoft's IP rights — is gone. Revenue share to Microsoft now stops in 2030 regardless of any AGI declaration, and is subject to a new cap.
What Microsoft Keeps
Microsoft retains a nonexclusive license to OpenAI's IP for models and products through 2032, preserving Azure's first-look access. OpenAI also commits to roughly $250 billion in incremental Azure spend through the rest of the decade — locking in long-term compute revenue for Microsoft even as exclusivity drops. Microsoft, meanwhile, stops paying its own revenue share to OpenAI, a quiet but material concession in the Redmond direction.
TechCrunchBlockAI News' View
This is the Frontier-era equivalent of an exit — but with both sides walking away with what they wanted. OpenAI gets multicloud distribution and the Amazon deal it had been quietly preparing for months; Microsoft trades exclusivity for a capped, durable revenue stream and IP rights it can build into Copilot. The bigger signal is for the next generation of AI labs: frontier model providers will not stay tied to a single hyperscaler, and any future "exclusive" cloud deal should be priced like a finite option, not a permanent moat.
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