OpenAI and Microsoft issue joint statement on renegotiated partnership

OpenAI and Microsoft issued a joint statement announcing a non-binding memorandum of understanding on a renegotiated partnership, resolving months of reported tension over how OpenAI’s planned conversion into a public-benefit corporation would affect Microsoft’s existing rights. The statement was published the same day OpenAI said its non-profit parent would retain a stake in the restructured business worth more than $100 billion.

Under the terms described, Microsoft would remain OpenAI’s exclusive provider of frontier-model intellectual property and Azure API access through at least 2032, an extension of the previous 2030 cutoff, and that exclusivity would survive even past the point at which OpenAI’s board formally declared it had reached artificial general intelligence — a contractual trigger in the companies’ earlier agreement that had complicated the restructuring talks. In exchange, OpenAI gained more freedom to jointly develop certain products with third parties and to offer some non-API services on other cloud providers, while Microsoft retained the right to pursue AGI research independently or with other partners.

Both companies declined to disclose the full financial terms of the agreement, including the eventual size of Microsoft’s equity stake, at the time of the statement. The memorandum was a framework rather than a signed final agreement, and the restructuring it described was only formally completed the following month, when the two companies published detailed figures for their respective stakes in the new public-benefit corporation. The September statement mattered chiefly for resolving the AGI-clause standoff that had been the main public obstacle to OpenAI converting its corporate structure at all.