Sam Altman’s competitive strategy is heating up with a new partnership involving Amazon Web Services. OpenAI recently unveiled two open-weight reasoning models, matching the capabilities of its O-series. In a parallel announcement, Amazon revealed that these models will be available on AWS starting Tuesday. This marks the first time OpenAI models will be offered through AWS, confirmed by the company to TechCrunch. The models will be accessible via Amazon’s AI services, Bedrock and SageMaker.
While the models can be downloaded independently through Hugging Face, Amazon’s offering comes with OpenAI’s explicit approval. Dmitry Pimenov, OpenAI’s product lead, emphasized this in the announcement. An AWS spokesperson likened the arrangement to its earlier release of the open model DeepSeek-R1.
This move is a strategic play for both companies. For AWS, it places the cloud giant alongside OpenAI, the leading model maker. Until now, AWS has primarily been associated with Anthropic’s Claude, a major OpenAI competitor, as both a host and financial backer. AWS also supports models from Cohere, DeepSeek, Meta, and Mistral, alongside its own in-house offerings. Bedrock enables AWS customers to develop generative AI applications using preferred models, while SageMaker facilitates AI model training and building, primarily for analytics.
Microsoft, AWS’s chief rival, lost its exclusive hold on OpenAI models earlier this year. However, Azure remains OpenAI’s most significant cloud partner. OpenAI confirmed that Microsoft will also provide optimized versions of these new models for Windows devices.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has faced mounting pressure over AWS’s perceived lag in AI compared to competitors like Microsoft. During Amazon’s recent earnings call, analysts grilled Jassy on AWS’s slower cloud growth relative to Microsoft and Google. Jassy defended AWS’s position, asserting that Microsoft’s cloud business is still significantly smaller.
Meanwhile, Oracle secured a massive $30 billion annual deal with OpenAI for data center services, overshadowing AWS’s previous exclusion from OpenAI-related partnerships.
For OpenAI, the AWS partnership strengthens its position amid reported tensions with Microsoft. The two companies are renegotiating their long-term agreement, making AWS’s backing a strategic advantage. Additionally, the move allows AWS enterprise customers to experiment with OpenAI models in their AI applications.
Sam Altman’s decision to release these high-performing models under an Apache 2.0 open-source license also counters Meta’s recent shift away from fully open-sourcing its upcoming “superintelligence” models. This positions OpenAI as a leader in open AI development while challenging competitors on multiple fronts.