On April 23, 2026, OpenAI released GPT-5.5, but four days later came something even more significant: the company's independence from Microsoft's cloud services.
GPT-5.5 launched first for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. According to OpenAI's benchmarks, the model performed better than Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro and Anthropic's Claude Opus in multiple tests, especially for coding tasks and scientific research.
However, the bigger news arrived on April 27. OpenAI and Microsoft announced a new partnership agreement that changed the AI industry. For nearly seven years, Microsoft's Azure was the only cloud allowed to run OpenAI's models. Now, OpenAI can use any cloud provider.
Microsoft remains the "primary cloud partner," and OpenAI products will launch first on Azure. However, OpenAI products are now available on Amazon Web Services through Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud is expected to follow soon.
Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, explained the change on social media: "Microsoft will remain our primary cloud partner, but we are now able to make our products and services available across all clouds."
For Microsoft, this change is complicated. The company has invested billions in OpenAI since 2019 and previously had exclusive rights to distribute OpenAI's products. Under the new agreement, Microsoft's license is no longer exclusive, though the company keeps access to OpenAI's technology until 2032.