Microsoft and OpenAI Loosen Their Partnership

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Microsoft and OpenAI Loosen Their Partnership

Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest financial partner, will to continue to license the start-up’s technology but will no longer be its exclusive licensee.

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OpenAI offices in San Francisco.

Credit...

Jason Henry for The New York Times

By

Cade Metz

and

Karen Weise

Cade Metz reported from San Francisco, and Karen Weise from Seattle.

April 27, 2026,

9:48 a.m. ET

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Microsoft and OpenAI have amended their partnership to reduce their dependence on each other amid an escalating global artificial intelligence race, the companies said on Monday.

Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s biggest financial partner, will continue to license OpenAI’s A.I. technology through 2032. But the tech giant, whose stake in OpenAI is valued at more than $135 billion, will no longer be the exclusive licensee of the start-up’s A.I. technologies.

OpenAI will also no longer receive a share of revenue from Microsoft when the tech giant uses the start-up’s technologies. OpenAI will continue to pay a share of revenue to Microsoft when the tech giant serves OpenAI’s technologies to businesses and consumers via Microsoft’s cloud computing services. But OpenAI has more flexibility to work with other cloud computing providers, the two companies said.

OpenAI will release its technology on Microsoft’s cloud services first, the companies said, unless “Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.” The start-up then has the right to release products on other cloud services.

The new agreement also removes complex language that could have changed the two companies’ partnership if OpenAI declared that it had reached artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. That level of technology would mean, in theory, that the technology is as capable as a human brain.

The so-called A.G.I. clause added uncertainty for Microsoft.

On Monday, jury selection is set to begin in a

blockbuster trial

that cuts to the heart of the relationship with OpenAI and Microsoft. Elon Musk, an early funder of OpenAI when it was a nonprofit, has sued the start-up and Microsoft in federal court, saying they breached the lab’s founding agreement by putting commercial interests over the public good. Mr. Musk is asking for more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft.

Microsoft is also scheduled to report its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

(The New York Times

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