OpenAI has now partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer its AI models on Amazon’s cloud. This is the first time OpenAI models are available directly on AWS, including services like Bedrock and SageMaker.
This move is interesting because OpenAI has always been closely linked with Microsoft. Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor and has exclusive access to ChatGPT in its own products. But by teaming up with Amazon, OpenAI seems to be signaling that it does not want to rely on just one partner anymore.
The models available on AWS are not ChatGPT or GPT-4, but open-weight models that are similar in performance to OpenAI’s o-series. These models were already available for download on Hugging Face, but now they are easier to use through AWS tools. OpenAI’s product lead confirmed that Amazon has full permission to host them.
This partnership could be a smart strategic move by OpenAI. Its relationship with Microsoft has not been smooth lately. Reports suggest both companies are renegotiating their deal. OpenAI might be doing this to gain more independence and attract more enterprise users.
For Amazon, this is a big win. AWS already offers models from Anthropic, Meta, and others, but OpenAI was missing until now. Just a few days ago, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy faced tough questions from investors about AWS falling behind Microsoft and Google in the AI race. This new partnership may help change that.
OpenAI also recently signed a major $30 billion deal with Oracle to use its data centers. This shows that OpenAI is clearly working with multiple cloud providers. By doing this, it is keeping its options open and reaching more users.
The open-weight models released on AWS come with an Apache 2.0 license. That means anyone can use and modify them freely. This could also be OpenAI’s way of challenging Meta, which has been leading the open-source AI movement but might restrict access to its future models.
Overall, this deal shows that OpenAI is expanding its reach and not depending only on Microsoft. It could also be a warning to Microsoft that OpenAI is ready to explore other partnerships. With AWS now in the picture, the AI cloud competition is heating up again.
