OpenAI says partnership with Microsoft limits business growth - CNBC

OpenAI suggests that its relationship with Microsoft is limiting its ability to grow in the enterprise segment, where the ChatGPT developer faces stiff competition, according to an internal company letter. OpenAI sees its recent deal with Amazon as key to growth in this area. According to the FT, the agreement has raised questions for OpenAI's main investor, which is considering, among other things, legal action.

OpenAI sees its partnership with Amazon as key to expanding its share of the enterprise market, OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser said in a memo seen by CNBC.

Dresser said the partnership with Amazon - particularly through the Amazon Web Services Bedrock cloud platform - will allow OpenAI to better meet the needs of enterprise customers. She emphasized that OpenAI's long-standing partnership with Microsoft, while fundamental, simultaneously limits the company's ability to work with customers where they have already deployed their infrastructure and in many cases that is Bedrock. Demand for Bedrock integration has been "overwhelming" since the announcement of OpenAI's deal with Amazon, the senior executive noted.

Microsoft is OpenAI's largest investor. As of last October, the company held a 27% stake in the ChatGPT developer, which was valued at about $135 billion at the time.

In late February, Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic alliance. As part of the deal, Amazon Web Services is to become the exclusive third-party cloud provider for Frontier, OpenAI's enterprise AI agent platform. The agreement, according to the FT's sources, has raised questions for Microsoft - its partnership with OpenAI involves using the Windows developer's Azure cloud platform. In March, the FT, citing sources, wrote that Microsoft was considering legal action against OpenAI and Amazon.

OpenAI is now desperately seeking to strengthen its position in the corporate market, where competition from Anthropic with its Claude model and Google with its Gemini line is intensifying. The fight for the corporate segment of the market is becoming critical as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for possible IPOs later this year: the companies are trying to convince investors of the sustainability of their business models and justify significant investments in AI infrastructure, CNBC writes.

The corporate business already generates about 40% of OpenAI's revenue and could reach parity with the consumer business by the end of the year, OpenAI CFO Sarah Freire told CNBC.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor