Top image: Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian speaks at the 2022 Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md. Photo: U.S. Air Force/Eric Dietrich (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons
OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models are now on Google Cloud. The companies announced the arrangement on Oct. 21. Google and OpenAI compete directly in AI models, chatbots and coding tools, but the deal lets businesses that run on Google’s infrastructure buy OpenAI’s technology through their existing Google accounts.
With it, OpenAI’s models are available on all three of the largest cloud infrastructure providers, CNBC reported. Amazon announced plans to host OpenAI models earlier this year, after Microsoft’s exclusive license to OpenAI’s intellectual property ended.
“We are focused on giving customers a broad selection of models, including those from OpenAI, so they can choose the right model for any given job, helping to deliver optimal quality and lower costs,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in OpenAI’s announcement.
“This partnership is an important step in making our most capable models and Codex available where customers are already building, giving them even more choice in how they use frontier AI as we grow the agentic ecosystem together,” said OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman.
OpenAI’s announcement closed by noting that “Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner.”
What customers get
According to a Google Cloud blog post by Michael Gerstenhaber, vice president of product management for Gemini at Google Cloud, three OpenAI models are rolling out now in private preview to select enterprise customers in Google Cloud’s model catalog, called Model Garden:
- GPT-6 Astra, for demanding coding, computer-use, professional and scientific work
- GPT-6.1 Sol, which Google describes as offering near-Astra capability at lower cost
- GPT-6 Luna, a fast, lower-cost model for everyday tasks
Google said customers can also connect OpenAI’s Codex coding tools to its platform. OpenAI models are coming soon to Google’s Gemini for business and Google Antigravity, its coding tool. OpenAI said general availability is planned “in the coming weeks.”
The business terms
For corporate buyers, the arrangement mainly changes how they pay. OpenAI said customers will buy the models through Google Cloud Marketplace, and companies with Google Cloud spending commitments can count those purchases against them. Google said usage will appear on a single Google Cloud invoice and will count toward its Flexible Savings Plans across model providers.
In practice, that means Google Cloud customers can use money they have already committed to Google rather than set up a separate contract to buy OpenAI’s models.
On data handling, Google said customer prompts, context and outputs stay within the customer’s designated data perimeter and are “never used to train foundation models.” It said OpenAI models run “on dedicated Google Cloud infrastructure.” Zero-data-retention options and confidential computing are listed as coming soon.
Google called itself “the only hyperscale cloud provider offering access to all three leading closed source LLMs,” alongside more than 200 other models. That is Google’s own claim. It already offers Anthropic’s Claude models alongside its own Gemini family.
Box, the content-management company, was the one customer quoted in Google’s post. “Helping customers put AI to work across their enterprise content requires leading models backed by strong security and rigorous compliance standards,” said Yashodha Bhavnani, Box’s vice president of AI products.
Why it matters
The deal comes as cloud growth is central to next week’s earnings. Charles Schwab, in an Oct. 20 preview, said Google Cloud revenue rose 82% from a year earlier in the second quarter to a record $24.8 billion. It said Amazon Web Services grew 37% and Microsoft Cloud revenue rose 26%. Alphabet and Microsoft report Wednesday, and Amazon reports Thursday.
CNBC noted that, according to data from corporate card issuer Ramp, most business spending on AI goes to OpenAI and Anthropic, though some corporate IT departments have adopted Google’s Gemini models. CNBC also reported that OpenAI is courting investors at a $1.4 trillion valuation and targeting an initial public offering.
The two companies have worked together before. CNBC reported that OpenAI said last year it was using Google’s cloud to run ChatGPT and its application programming interface.
For Google, the move fits a pitch Kurian made at the company’s Gemini at Work event on Oct. 8. There he described Gemini as an agent that “runs each job on the model that fits best,” according to The Register, orchestrating across Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude models “and other leading private and open models in the future.”
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