Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and OpenAI (Unlisted:OPAI) have announced a sweeping overhaul of their partnership that strips away the exclusivity protections at the heart of their original agreement, giving the ChatGPT maker freedom to sell its products across any cloud provider, including rivals Amazon and Google.
The amended deal, announced Monday, ends Microsoft's revenue share payments to OpenAI entirely, while capping the payments OpenAI owes Microsoft through 2030 at a fixed ceiling independent of OpenAI's technology progress.
Microsoft's license to OpenAI's intellectual property will continue through 2032 but will no longer be exclusive.
Azure will retain first-launch rights for new OpenAI products, but only in cases where Microsoft can and chooses to support the required capabilities — a carve-out that opens the door for OpenAI to route deployments to competing platforms.
Shares of Microsoft fell nearly 3% following the announcement before recovering to trade around 0.5% lower.
The restructured terms arrive as OpenAI has dramatically expanded its financial and strategic independence. In February 2026, the company closed a $110 billion funding round backed by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. Microsoft had already lost its right of first refusal as OpenAI's cloud provider in October 2025.
Wedbush analysts said the new structure positions OpenAI for a public offering by reducing barriers tied to the original partnership. "We believe this puts OpenAI on a strong path forward to going public through IPO given its clearer opportunity in the cloud environment while reducing significant barriers from its original partnership with Microsoft," Wedbush said, noting that OpenAI can now deploy across AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle.
For Microsoft, analysts viewed the deal as a net positive despite the near-term market reaction. The company secures six years of IP rights over OpenAI technology and retains a significant ownership stake, while bringing an end to ongoing tensions between the two sides. "The training wheels are off for MSFT with OpenAI and now it's about a step-up in AI monetization on its core platform looking forward," Wedbush wrote.