Microsoft and OpenAI’s famed AGI agreement is dead

AICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AINewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechMicrosoft and OpenAI’s famed AGI agreement is deadThe two companies’ oft-renegotiated deal has become even less exclusive.The two companies’ oft-renegotiated deal has become even less exclusive.by Hayden FieldCloseHayden FieldSenior AI ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Hayden FieldApr 27, 2026, 4:15 PM UTCLinkShareGiftImage: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty ImagesHayden FieldCloseHayden FieldPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Hayden Field is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets.OpenAI and Microsoft’s partnership-turned-situationship just got even less committed. And a clause about artificial general intelligence, which has for years dictated the future of their deal, has officially been dropped.On Monday morning, Microsoft announced a handful of big changes to its long-standing OpenAI deal. Microsoft will remain OpenAI’s “primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure, unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.” But OpenAI can “now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider.” That lets OpenAI pursue its goals of courting enterprise customers as it reportedly prepares to go public — opening the door to working with Amazon or Google, for instance, and attempting to relieve restraints on its compute that have led to spats with Microsoft. Microsoft appears to still receive a cut of revenue from these outside agreements.Perhaps more notably, the two companies killed the contract’s “AGI clause,” which set a variety of conditions if one of them achieved “artificial general intelligence.” (It’s a vaguely defined industry term that typically means AI systems that equal or surpass human intelligence on a wide range of tasks.)The change impacts a revenue-sharing agreement, which was supposed to stay in place until AGI was declared. But now, the revenue-share payments coming from OpenAI to Microsoft will only continue through 2030 — and though they’ll continue “at the same percentage,” they’ll also be “subject to a total cap” instead of continuing in perpetuity. The payments will also continue and then end “independent of OpenAI’s technology progress,” which under any reasonable logic includes AGI. So RIP to that deal.This is the second renegotiation of the clause. When OpenAI completed its controversial for-profit restructuring in October, it needed Microsoft’s blessing — and in the process of getting that blessing, the two companies struck a new deal. Before the October contract changes, Microsoft would’ve lost its rights to OpenAI’s technology once the latter had reached AGI. But Microsoft’s IP rights for OpenAI’s models and products were extended through 2032 — and Microsoft’s rights included models even after an independent panel theoretically declares AGI had been reached.Now, there’s no independent panel, there’s no…

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