Microsoft - whose stock is falling in futures trading on Wall Street after the announcement - will remain a major shareholder in OpenAI, the tech giant writes in a press release.
"The rapid development of technology is driving Microsoft and OpenAI to reshape their collaboration. A new supplementary agreement will simplify the parties' relationship and give both companies greater freedom to explore new opportunities in the AI market," Microsoft writes.
No exclusive license agreement
According to the new agreement between the companies, Microsoft is open to changing the licensing agreement for OpenAI's models and products so that it is no longer exclusive.
Microsoft will remain OpenAI's primary cloud partner through the Azure platform.
"OpenAI's products will primarily be launched on Azure, unless Microsoft lacks capacity or chooses not to support specific features. At the same time, OpenAI now has the freedom to offer its products to customers via any cloud provider," writes Microsoft.
Amazon's stock is rising at the same time, as the company is assumed to be able to benefit from OpenAI's licenses no longer being exclusive.
When OpenAI restructured from a non-profit organization to a for-profit company last year, Microsoft took a 27 percent stake in the company.
Started as a non-profit research lab
OpenAI was started as a non-profit research lab in San Francisco in 2015, with Elon Musk and Sam Altman among the founders.
The aim was to develop artificial intelligence that benefited all of humanity, using open research and tools that everyone could take advantage of.
A first step towards profit-making was taken in 2019, when more computing power was needed to run large language models.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has been an industry leader in AI development.
