Catenaa, Wednesday, March 18, 2026-ย Microsoft is considering legal action against its partner OpenAI and Amazon over a $50 billion deal that could violate its โexclusive cloud agreement with the ChatGPT maker.
The Financial Times reported on โWednesday that the dispute centers on whether OpenAI can offer Frontier via AWS without violating the Microsoft partnership, which requires the startupโs models to be accessed through the โWindows makerโs Azure cloud platform.
Last month, Amazon and OpenAI signed several agreements, including one that makes Amazon Web Services โthe exclusive third-party cloud provider for Frontier, OpenAIโs enterprise platform for building and running AI agents.
OpenAI and Microsoft recently stated together that โAzure remains the exclusive โ cloud provider of stateless OpenAI APIs,โ a Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters, referring to software interfaces used to access OpenAIโs models.ย
โWe are confident that OpenAI โunderstands and โrespects the importance of living up to โthis legal obligation,โ the spokesperson โadded.
FT said Microsoft executives believed the approach was not feasible and would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of their agreement, and added that the companies were in talks to resolve the dispute without litigation ahead of Frontierโs launch.
โWe know our โcontract,โ a person familiar with Microsoftโs position told โthe newspaper. โWe will sue them if they โbreach it. If Amazon and OpenAI โwant to take a bet on the creativity of their โcontractual lawyers, I would back us, โnot them.โ
Microsoft was โone of OpenAIโs earliest investors, injecting $1 billion in 2019 and $10 billion at the beginning of 2023.
In September, the two signed a non-binding deal โunder new relationship terms, โpaving the way for OpenAI to sign deals with SoftBank, Nvidia โ, and Amazon.
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