The news: OpenAI signed a seven-year, $38 billion cloud compute deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS), its first partnership with the cloud market leader. The development effectively ended the startup’s exclusive reliance on Microsoft, its primary backer, per CNBC.

OpenAI will use existing AWS data centers, and Amazon will build dedicated infrastructure for OpenAI as part of the ChatGPT-maker’s expansion.

Zooming out: The deal’s timing aligns with and justifies record infrastructure outlays. Amazon spent $34.4 billion in Q3 2025 and expects $111 billion to $118 billion in full-year capex—surpassing Microsoft’s $80 billion and Alphabet’s $85 billion forecasts.

What this means for OpenAI: The AWS alliance signals OpenAI’s continued evolution as a self-sustaining enterprise. 

• Accessing AWS’ global data centers, flexible scale and capacity, and Nvidia GPU reserves broadens its operational base, reducing antitrust and financial risk as it scales GPT-5 and future models. This is vital for sustaining genAI’s exponential growth and will improve uptime during surging demand.
• The AWS partnership could also help attract new enterprise clients who already operate within Amazon’s cloud ecosystem, expanding OpenAI’s reach beyond Microsoft Azure users.

What this means for AWS: For Amazon, this is a strategic coup. AWS regains its footing in a fast-evolving AI arms race where Microsoft and Google have led with deep model partnerships. 

On top of its existing investment in Anthropic, the OpenAI deal validates AWS as a top-tier AI infrastructure provider and could attract enterprises wanting frontier performance on the world’s largest cloud.

What brands should expect: While hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google race to secure workloads, costs for training and inference are expected to decline. For brands, this means reduced outage risks and increased options for deploying AI-driven creative, analytics, and automation systems at scale. 

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