Google’s Cloud Will Sell OpenAI’s Models

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21 — OpenAIOpenAI will sell its newest models through Google Cloud, the two companies said on Wednesday, so a business will be able to buy GPT from the company that makes Gemini. Three of them, GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, are rolling out in private preview to select enterprise customers, Google said; OpenAI said general availability was “planned in the coming weeks.”

Customers will pay through Google Cloud Marketplace, and companies that have promised to spend a set sum with Google can count the purchases against it. “Enterprises with Google Cloud spend commitments will be able to draw down their GCP commitments for these purchases,” OpenAI said.

Google already sells Anthropic’s Claude models beside its own Gemini, and with OpenAI’s added it calls itself “the only hyperscale cloud provider offering access to all three leading closed source LLMs.”Model GardenGoogle Cloud’s catalog of AI models. Google says it holds more than 200 of its own, other companies’ and open models, and that OpenAI’s will run on dedicated Google Cloud infrastructure. OpenAI’s Codex coding agent comes too, and OpenAI says its models will soon be available in Google Antigravity and the Gemini Agent.

The biggest clouds are becoming the labs’ shopfronts. Hyperscalers are turning into “the main commercial channels for frontier AI labs,” Reuters wrote, and cloud providers usually take a cut of sales through their platforms. Neither company’s announcement gave financial terms.

How much rides on those channels showed in a figure Reuters reported the same day: 47 percent of Anthropic’s 2025 revenue came through Amazon’s and Google’s cloud platforms, according to Anthropic’s filing for an initial public offering, which Reuters reviewed.The FilingAnthropic’s filing has not been made public. A Daily Cortex search of the SEC’s EDGAR system at 5:26 a.m. Eastern on Thursday found no S-1 registration statement from Anthropic, only investment funds that carry its name. Both Amazon and Google back Anthropic, Reuters noted.

The Old Partner

The Google deal widens OpenAI’s distribution again, though OpenAI’s announcement closed with a line for Microsoft: “Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner.” Microsoft’s license to OpenAI’s technology was exclusive until April 27, when the two companies amended their agreement. The license became non-exclusive, and OpenAI said it could “now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider.” The next day Amazon and OpenAI said Amazon’s Bedrock service would carry OpenAI’s models and Codex, CNBC reported. With Google’s cloud, OpenAI’s models are now on all three of the top cloud infrastructure providers, CNBC noted.

Under the April terms, OpenAI’s products ship first on Microsoft’s Azure unless Microsoft “cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities,” and OpenAI keeps paying Microsoft a share of its revenue through 2030, “at the same percentage but subject to a total cap.”The ShareCNBC reported in April, citing a person familiar with the agreement, that the percentage is 20 percent. Microsoft no longer pays a revenue share to OpenAI, OpenAI said. Microsoft also remains a major shareholder in OpenAI.MSFTNasdaq521.91▼8.23−1.6%Microsoft · Friday’s session

Google gains on two counts. It struck a cloud deal last year to supply OpenAI with more computing capacity, Reuters noted, and now it will sell OpenAI’s models to its own cloud customers as well.GOOGLNasdaq279.84▼3.98−1.4%Alphabet · Friday’s session Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud’s chief executive, has told Reuters that its platform is open and welcomes any model popular with developers.

For OpenAI, the prize is business customers. Reuters described the deal as part of OpenAI’s effort to sell its models to more enterprises, and CNBC called wider distribution critical as OpenAI tries to build beyond its consumer roots. Among businesses that use Ramp’s software for tracking AI token spending, Anthropic and OpenAI took a combined 96.5 percent of that spending in the week ended Oct. 11, and Google 1.2 percent, by the corporate card issuer’s data. Ramp says the sample is not representative of all the AI spending it sees, though the results are directionally similar.

The Gatekeeper

Later on Wednesday, OpenAI said that from Nov. 20 its usage policies would require “services that provide direct access to our models such as model routers or AI gateways to get our review and approval before offering that access.” Partners that provide access to its models must also “maintain safeguards consistent with our own,” it said.

OpenAI presented the change as a matter of safety, so that safeguards hold “whether people access our models directly or through a partner.” It also gives OpenAI the final word on the routers and gateways that offer its models, just as it multiplies the places where they are sold.

The shelves are getting crowded. Meta, which reported its quarter on Wednesday, is building an enterprise business to sell its own models; its main offering in the near term will be “the model API and Muse code,” Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, told analysts, according to a transcript published by The Motley Fool.

OpenAI says general availability on Google Cloud is planned in the coming weeks, and its new rules take effect on Nov. 20. Alphabet and Microsoft both report quarterly results on Oct. 28.

Daily Cortex is written with AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude, and fact-checked with OpenAI’s GPT models.