OpenAI will make its artificial intelligence models available to developers through Google Cloud, even though the two companies have been rivals for years.
For OpenAI, the move reflects a strong push to broaden how its models are distributed to enterprise developers. This matters a great deal: the ChatGPT developer wants to move beyond its consumer-facing roots and expand its business, enterprise-focused offerings.
With this partnership in place, OpenAI's models will now be available on the platforms of the world's three leading cloud infrastructure providers.
Less than six months ago, OpenAI announced that Microsoft (ASX: MSFT) would no longer hold an exclusive license to its intellectual property. The day after that exclusivity arrangement expired, cloud industry leader Amazon.com (ASX: AMZN) unveiled plans to host OpenAI's models.
Now Google has secured its own entry as well. Within the coming weeks, OpenAI's GPT family of products will be listed on Google Cloud's model marketplace and its Anti gravity coding development tool.
In a blog post, OpenAI said: "Google Cloud has long been deeply engaged in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and has become an important platform for hosting AI compute workloads and bringing together relevant developers and data scientists."
Google has grown rapidly in its cloud business this year. Helped by robust demand for AI models and its custom-designed chips, its cloud business annualized revenue growth climbed to about 82% in the second quarter from 63% in the first quarter.
Over the same period, the second-quarter growth rates for the cloud businesses of Amazon and Microsoft were 37% and 42%, respectively. All three companies are due to report quarterly earnings next week.
Most enterprise spending on AI flows to OpenAI and Anthropic, according to data from corporate card issuer Ramp, though some corporate IT departments have already integrated Google's Gemini models into their own systems. Google released its next-generation Gemini 4 Argon model in September.
OpenAI was founded in 2015, with one of its original aims being to counter the monopoly that companies like Google held over AI research resources. Two years later, Google employees published the influential Transformer paper that laid the technical foundation for modern AI; ultimately, however, it was OpenAI that brought the technology to the masses through ChatGPT.
OpenAI is currently pursuing a funding round at a valuation of $1.4 trillion, and plans to launch an IPO. Google and OpenAI had already worked together last year, when the AI lab said it would use Google Cloud to run ChatGPT and its application programming interface (API).
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