By Stephen Nellis and Krystal Hu
(Reuters) – Microsoft (MSFT) said on Tuesday it changed some key terms of a deal with OpenAI after the ChatGPT creator announced a joint venture with Oracle (ORCL) and Japanese group SoftBank to build up to $500 billion in new AI data centers. in the United States.
President Donald Trump gathered leaders of the “Stargate” effort at the White House on Tuesday to announce the deal, saying it was aimed at helping keep the United States ahead of China and other rivals in the global AI race, using chips from Nvidia (NVDA).
Since 2019, Microsoft has had agreements with OpenAI that gave the Redmond, Washington-based company the exclusive right to build new computing infrastructure for OpenAI. Microsoft, in a blog post, said it “approved OpenAI’s ability to develop additional capacity, primarily for research and model training.”
That opened the door for OpenAI to work with Oracle.
A person familiar with the deal said Stargate is a joint venture structured as a new entity in which OpenAI has equity ownership, governance rights and operational control. It will have a separate board appointed by the founding members and its own chief executive, this person said. The company will also have other investors, including the United Arab Emirates company MGX.
Microsoft, along with Nvidia and Arm, will be a “technology partner” in the new company, but is not listed as an equity financier. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will serve as chairman of the entity’s board of directors, according to a statement from OpenAI posted on social media site X.
But Microsoft said it still retains the exclusive right to offer the OpenAI API, a technological shorthand for application programming interface, which is the main way software developers and commercial customers purchase OpenAI services. That means Oracle will not be able to host OpenAI’s main revenue stream.
Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Microsoft’s statements.
Microsoft said it has “revenue sharing agreements that flow both ways” with OpenAI.
“Key elements of our partnership remain in place for the life of our contract through 2030, and our access to OpenAI intellectual property, our revenue sharing agreements, and our exclusivity on OpenAI APIs continue forward,” Microsoft said.
Microsoft also said that “OpenAI recently made a major new commitment to Azure that will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training,” referring to Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Krystal Hu in Davos, Switzerland; Editing by Christopher Cushing)