OpenAI is popping to Google for assist with its rising computing wants, three sources have informed Reuters. The transfer is surprising given the rivalry between the 2 in synthetic intelligence, nevertheless it displays the large demand for computing energy to coach and run AI fashions.
One of many three sources mentioned the deal was finalised in Might after months of dialogue. OpenAI has been working to ease its reliance on Microsoft by including different cloud suppliers to fulfill rising demand. That features supporting large-scale efforts like its Stargate undertaking and maintaining with commitments made in latest offers with chipmakers and infrastructure distributors.
For Google, the deal brings a brand new high-profile buyer to its cloud platform. The corporate will present further computing sources to assist OpenAI’s AI coaching and mannequin operations, the sources mentioned. This comes as ChatGPT continues to problem Google’s core search enterprise. Nonetheless, Google executives just lately acknowledged that there could also be room for a couple of winner within the AI area.
OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft declined to remark.
Since launching ChatGPT in late 2022, OpenAI has confronted rising stress to scale up its compute capability – each for coaching giant language fashions and for inference, or working these fashions in actual time. On Monday, OpenAI mentioned its annualised income had reached $10 billion as of June 2025, fuelled by rising use of its instruments.
Earlier this yr, OpenAI teamed with SoftBank and Oracle on the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure effort and signed multi-billion-dollar agreements with CoreWeave. The corporate can also be engaged on designing its personal chip to chop again on outdoors {hardware} use, Reuters reported in February.
The cope with Google follows a shift earlier this yr that ended OpenAI’s unique reliance on Microsoft’s Azure. An individual accustomed to the state of affairs mentioned OpenAI and Google had been in talks for some time, however present agreements with Microsoft had delayed any deal. Microsoft and OpenAI at the moment are transforming the phrases of their partnership, together with Microsoft’s future possession stake.
For Google, the timing traces up with its push to broaden use of its in-house chips, known as tensor processing items or TPUs. TPUs had been as soon as restricted to inner tasks however at the moment are being utilized by outdoors purchasers, together with Apple and OpenAI opponents together with Anthropic and Secure Superintelligence.
Including OpenAI to its cloud buyer checklist provides Google one other option to develop its cloud enterprise, which introduced in $43 billion final yr – about 12% of Alphabet’s whole income. Google has pitched itself as a impartial cloud supplier for startups trying to keep away from getting locked into Amazon or Microsoft, and AI corporations have turn out to be a serious supply of spending.
Nonetheless, Google faces its personal pressures. The corporate is pouring cash into AI and expects capital spending to succeed in $75 billion this yr. On the similar time, it’s underneath scrutiny from regulators and stress from buyers who wish to see returns on their billions.
Internally, the deal provides one other layer of complexity. Google’s AI lab DeepMind competes with OpenAI, and promoting computing energy to a rival can create rigidity over how sources are shared. CEO Sundar Pichai must weigh the calls for of Google’s enterprise prospects towards these of its personal AI groups.
The pressure is already being felt. Google’s finance chief mentioned in April that the corporate didn’t have sufficient cloud capability to fulfill demand within the earlier quarter. And whereas ChatGPT leads Google’s Gemini in consumer numbers, Pichai has performed down the danger of OpenAI slicing into the corporate’s core enterprise.
(Picture by Jonathan Kemper)
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