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OpenAI adds Google Cloud as computing partner

OpenAI has added Google Cloud to its list of computing capacity suppliers, as said on the company’s updated website.

The agreement with Google was finalized in May 2025 after several months of discussions.

To meet its increasing computing needs, OpenAI also uses services from Microsoft, Oracle, and CoreWeave.

This change indicates a strategic shift for OpenAI to diversify its computing resources beyond its primary partner, Microsoft.

🔗 Source: Reuters


🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ The growing compute crisis reshaping AI company strategies

OpenAI’s multi-cloud strategy demonstrates how computing constraints have become the primary bottleneck for AI advancement, forcing even rivals to collaborate.

The addition of Google Cloud to OpenAI’s roster, which already includes Microsoft, Oracle, and CoreWeave, shows how AI leaders are abandoning cloud exclusivity in favor of maximizing computational capacity 1.

This represents a significant strategic shift for OpenAI, which had previously relied exclusively on Microsoft Azure as its data center infrastructure provider until January 2025 2.

The scale of this computing challenge is staggering. OpenAI is reportedly planning to expand its data center capacity from approximately 1.5 gigawatts to nearly 10 gigawatts over just two years 1.

These infrastructure demands align with findings from the 2023 “State of AI” report, which identified specialized AI hardware and cloud provider relationships as critical factors shaping the future of AI development 3.

The urgent hunt for computing power has led to multi-billion dollar agreements with providers like CoreWeave and ambitious infrastructure programs like the $500 billion Stargate project with SoftBank and Oracle.

2️⃣ The evolution of the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship

The Google Cloud partnership marks the latest chapter in the evolving relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft, which began with a $1 billion investment and exclusive computing partnership in July 2019 456.

This initial partnership was framed as highly collaborative, with Microsoft gaining access to OpenAI’s technologies while OpenAI received crucial Azure cloud resources needed for training large-scale AI models 5.

Recent OpenAI developments

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