OpenAI’s revenue chief praises Amazon tie-up, says Microsoft deal “limited our ability” to reach Bedrock customers

The memo

It has been reported that Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s newly appointed chief revenue officer, sent an internal memo touting the company’s alliance with Amazon as a major growth driver for its enterprise business — and bluntly noting that the longstanding Microsoft partnership “limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that's Bedrock.” Short and to the point. The memo, viewed by CNBC, said inbound demand for the Bedrock offering has been “frankly staggering.” Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cloud politics and the Amazon play

Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI earlier this year, and Microsoft has poured more than $13 billion into the company since 2019. It has been reported that OpenAI plans to lean into Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock platform to reach customers who prefer a multi-model, cloud-native approach. Is OpenAI choosing sides? Not exactly. But the note makes the stakes plain: access, distribution, and where customers want to run models matter as much as model quality.

Competition heats up

The memo lands amid furious enterprise jockeying. Anthropic’s Claude has been described as enjoying “mania” at industry events, while Google’s Gemini and other rivals press hard for enterprise share. It has been reported that Dresser also accused Anthropic of a “strategic misstep to not acquire enough compute,” a claim Anthropic hasn’t publicly disputed. With IPOs rumored and valuations — reportedly north of $850 billion for OpenAI in its latest round and about $380 billion for Anthropic — the fight for enterprise contracts is existential.

The road ahead

Dresser, a former Slack CEO and longtime Salesforce executive, has been clear: focus on customers. It has been reported that OpenAI’s enterprise business accounts for roughly 40% of revenue and is “on track to reach parity” with consumer income this year. The deeper irony? A partnership that helped build OpenAI is now a constraint when enterprise customers want to run models on rival cloud infrastructure. Tension, not détente. Expect more of this — and maybe a few awkward conversations between the giants.

Sources: cnbc.com