During a White House event, President Donald Trump convened the leaders involved in the "Stargate" initiative to unveil the partnership, emphasizing its goal to maintain the United States' competitive edge over China and other adversaries in the global AI landscape, utilizing chips from Nvidia (NVDA).
Since 2019, Microsoft has maintained agreements with OpenAI that granted the Redmond, Washington-based firm exclusive rights to develop new computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In a blog post, Microsoft stated it has "approved OpenAI's ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models," thereby enabling OpenAI to collaborate with Oracle.
According to a source familiar with the arrangement, Stargate is structured as a new entity in which OpenAI holds an equity stake, governance rights, and operational control. This entity will have its own board appointed by the founding members and a separate CEO. Additionally, it will include other investors, such as the United Arab Emirates firm MGX.
While Microsoft, along with Nvidia and Arm, will serve as a "technology partner" in this new venture, it is not listed as an equity investor. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is expected to chair the board of this entity, as stated by OpenAI on the social media platform X.
Despite these developments, Microsoft maintains its exclusive rights to provide OpenAI's API—an essential tool for software developers and business clients to access OpenAI's services. Consequently, Oracle will not be able to host OpenAI's primary revenue-generating services.
Oracle has not yet responded to requests for comments regarding Microsoft's statements.
Microsoft also mentioned that it has "revenue sharing agreements that flow both ways" with OpenAI.
"The key elements of our partnership remain in place for the duration of our contract through 2030, with our access to OpenAI’s IP, our revenue sharing arrangements and our exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs all continuing forward," Microsoft said.
Microsoft announced that OpenAI has recently entered into a significant commitment with Azure, which will further support all OpenAI products and their training processes, highlighting the capabilities of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service.