Data Points: OpenAI and Microsoft sever their exclusive relationship
This edition of The Batch covers several major AI industry developments: OpenAI has revised its partnership with Microsoft, ending exclusivity while retaining Microsoft as primary cloud partner through 2032 and gaining freedom to deploy on AWS and Google Cloud. DeepSeek released V4 model weights featuring 1M-token context and Huawei Ascend chip optimization, though it trails leading open and closed models on aggregate benchmarks. Google and Amazon are deepening investments in Anthropic with up to $40B and $25B respectively in funding-for-compute deals, and an agentic AI system autonomously designed a functional RISC-V CPU from a 219-word spec in 12 hours.
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Microsoft Invests $1 Billion in OpenAI, Becomes Exclusive Cloud Provider
Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI in July 2019, establishing a strategic partnership aimed at building AGI with broadly distributed economic benefits. As part of the deal, Microsoft becomes OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider, and the two companies will jointly develop Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure. This partnership laid the foundation for OpenAI's large-scale model training on Azure and subsequent deeper integrations between the two organizations.
Data Points: China Blocks Meta-Manus Deal; Microsoft-OpenAI Restructure; Nvidia Nemotron Omni; Grok 4.3; OpenAI AGI Principles; IBM Granite 4.1
A roundup of major AI developments: Chinese regulators blocked Meta's acquisition of Singapore-based agent startup Manus on security grounds; Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership, with OpenAI gaining freedom to sell on rival clouds while Microsoft loses its AGI-access clause; Nvidia released Nemotron 3 Nano Omni, a 30B MoE omnimodal open-weights model for local agent deployment; xAI shipped Grok 4.3 with a 1M-token context window at reduced pricing; OpenAI published AGI operating principles; and IBM released Granite 4.1 across language, vision, speech, embedding, and safety modalities.
OpenAI and Microsoft Begin Azure Partnership for Large-Scale AI Experiments
OpenAI announced in November 2016 that it would begin running most of its large-scale experiments on Microsoft Azure. This marks the early formation of what would become a landmark strategic partnership between the two organizations. The announcement is brief and predates the major investment rounds that later defined the relationship.
OpenAI and Microsoft Extend Partnership
OpenAI and Microsoft announced an extension of their existing partnership. The announcement was published on OpenAI's blog in January 2023. No technical details about the scope, duration, or financial terms were included in the body of this item.
The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership
Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a new agreement to extend and strengthen their long-term partnership. The announcement emphasizes expanded innovation and responsible AI progress, though specific financial or structural terms are not detailed in the public announcement. This represents a continuation of one of the most significant commercial relationships in the AI industry.
Data Points: Perplexity Computer expands, Google Aletheia math agent, DeepSeek chip strategy, Nvidia retrieval pipeline, Stargate cancellation
The Batch's weekly data points roundup covers five significant AI developments: Perplexity expanded its Computer agentic platform to desktop, mobile, and enterprise with new APIs and financial data tools; Google released Aletheia, a Gemini-based math research agent achieving 95.1% on IMO-Proof Bench Advanced (up from 65.7%); DeepSeek withheld pre-release access to its V4 model from Nvidia and AMD while giving domestic Chinese chipmakers early access; Nvidia's NeMo Retriever topped the ViDoRe v3 leaderboard using a ReACT-based agentic retrieval loop; and OpenAI and Oracle cancelled plans to expand the Abilene Stargate campus from 1.2 GW to 2.0 GW due to financing and reliability issues.
Data Points: Qwen3.7-Max, OpenAI Math Proof, Gated DeltaNet-2, Trump AI Order, Microsoft Fara1.5
This edition of The Batch covers five significant AI developments: Alibaba's Qwen3.7-Max reasoning model with 1M token context and agentic capabilities ranking fifth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index; an OpenAI reasoning model resolving the 80-year-old Erdős planar unit distance problem; Nvidia's Gated DeltaNet-2 outperforming Mamba-3 and other linear attention architectures; Trump pulling back a proposed AI regulation executive order; and Microsoft Research's Fara1.5 computer-use agent family beating OpenAI Operator and Google Gemini on the Online-Mind2Web benchmark.
OpenAI and Amazon Partner to Build Stateful Runtime Environment for AI Agents on AWS
OpenAI and Amazon Web Services announced a partnership to build a stateful runtime environment for AI agents, designed to manage agent working states including memories, tool connections, and user permissions, running on Amazon Bedrock. The deal includes a $15 billion Amazon investment in OpenAI (with up to $35 billion more contingent on conditions), a $100 billion expansion of compute commitments using Amazon Trainium chips over 8 years, and makes AWS the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier. The arrangement exploits a legal distinction between stateful runtime environments and stateless APIs, allowing OpenAI to work with AWS while Microsoft retains exclusive rights to host OpenAI's stateless API calls. This marks a significant loosening of OpenAI's exclusive cloud relationship with Microsoft, mirroring a parallel diversification trend with Anthropic across cloud providers.