The new agreement “includes changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR),” Microsoft says. “To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”

The software giant was previously the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI and now retains right of first refusal.

If you've read about the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship over the past few years, you'd know that apart from its financial investments, Microsoft was also the exclusive cloud infra provider to OpenAI. While the former is still there,

Microsoft and OpenAI are loosening the tight bond that connects them. In future, OpenAI will be able to obtain cloud capacities for its AI from elsewhere.