“OpenAI is now able to release open-weight models that meet requisite capability criteria.”
Was Microsoft the blocker before? prior agreements clearly made true open-weights awkward-to-impossible without Microsoft’s sign-off. Microsoft had (a) an exclusive license to GPT-3’s underlying tech back in 2020 (i.e., access to the model/code beyond the public API), and (b) later, broad IP rights + API exclusivity on OpenAI models. If you’re contractually giving one partner IP rights and API exclusivity, shipping weights openly would undercut those rights. Today’s language looks like a carve-out to permit some open-weight releases as long as they’re below certain capability thresholds.
A few other notable tweaks in the new deal that help explain the change:
- AGI claims get verified by an independent panel (not just OpenAI declaring it).
- Microsoft keeps model/product IP rights through 2032, but OpenAI can now jointly develop with third parties, serve some things off non-Azure clouds, and—critically—release certain open-weights.
Those are all signs of loosened exclusivity.
My read: previously, the partnership structure (not just “Microsoft saying no”) effectively precluded open-weight releases; the updated agreement explicitly allows them within safety/capability guardrails.
Expect any “open-weight” drops to be intentionally scoped—useful, but a notch below their frontier closed models.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI has done the math and determined that even releasing frontier quality models wouldn't put much of a dent in either their B2B or B2C businesses. Or, rather, that any such dent would be vastly overshadowed by the value of fending off potential competitors.
I haven't looked too much into Deepseek's actual business, but at least Mistral seemed to be positioning themselves as a professional services shop to integrate their own open-weight models, compliant with EU regulations etc, at a huge premium. Any firm that has the SOA open model could do the same and cannibalize OpenAI's B2B business---perhaps even eventually pivoting into B2C---especially if regulations, downtime or security issues make firms more cloud-skeptical with respect to AI. As long as OpenAI can establish and hold the lead for best open-weight/on-premise model, it will be hard for anyone to justify premium pricing so as to generate sufficient cash flow from training their own models.
I can even imagine OpenAI eventually deciding that B2C is so much more valuable to them than B2B that it's worth completely sinking the latter market...
Was Microsoft the blocker before? prior agreements clearly made true open-weights awkward-to-impossible without Microsoft’s sign-off. Microsoft had (a) an exclusive license to GPT-3’s underlying tech back in 2020 (i.e., access to the model/code beyond the public API), and (b) later, broad IP rights + API exclusivity on OpenAI models. If you’re contractually giving one partner IP rights and API exclusivity, shipping weights openly would undercut those rights. Today’s language looks like a carve-out to permit some open-weight releases as long as they’re below certain capability thresholds.
A few other notable tweaks in the new deal that help explain the change:
- AGI claims get verified by an independent panel (not just OpenAI declaring it).
- Microsoft keeps model/product IP rights through 2032, but OpenAI can now jointly develop with third parties, serve some things off non-Azure clouds, and—critically—release certain open-weights.
Those are all signs of loosened exclusivity.
My read: previously, the partnership structure (not just “Microsoft saying no”) effectively precluded open-weight releases; the updated agreement explicitly allows them within safety/capability guardrails.
Expect any “open-weight” drops to be intentionally scoped—useful, but a notch below their frontier closed models.