OpenAI’s new open-weight models will be available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the two companies announced earlier this week, a move that has been welcomed as a positive step by Bank of America analysts.
On Monday, AWS said it will add OpenAI’s gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b to its Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker AI platforms, marking the first time any OpenAI models have been made available on AWS.
The models are not OpenAI’s most advanced, with Bank of America’s analysts highlighting that their capabilities are “more similar to a lightweight version of the flagship GPT-4 model.”
However, the analysts still see strategic significance in the deal. “We see the addition of OpenAI to the AWS platform, while far from a comprehensive deal, as a positive initial step in the relationship, suggesting the companies are interested in working together,” they wrote.
“AWS still does not benefit from OpenAI infrastructure spend like its peers, and may not be that focused on it given capacity constraints, but can now generate revenue from services around OpenAI's models leveraging its vertically integrated AI-stack.”
The deal also adds to AWS’s growing AI catalog, which now includes more than 100 models from various providers.
AWS has faced questions about its AI strategy, which Bank of America characterizes as “cost-focused,” but the firm says the OpenAI integration strengthens AWS’s offerings.
They believe the models fit well into AWS’s cost savings strategy, with the gpt-oss-120b model reportedly three times more price-efficient than Gemini, five times more than DeepSeek-R1, and twice as efficient as OpenAI’s own o4 model.
“While any future Open AI deal may be subject to contractual limitations with Microsoft, we think AWS would be very interested in adding more OpenAI capabilities, and AWS has a lot of customer reach to offer OpenAI as the company focuses on building out enterprise business,” they added.
Bank of America maintained its ‘Buy’ rating on Amazon along with a price objective of $272. Shares traded hands up 2.8% at $220 on Wednesday afternoon.