Dennis Dresser, OpenAI’s newly appointed head of revenue, sent a memo to staff on Sunday touting the partnership with the company. Amazon While being a key growth driver for the enterprise business, we are also mindful of the constraints of long-standing partnerships. microsoft.
Dresser’s memo comes less than two months after Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership. Microsoft, Amazon’s biggest cloud computing rival, has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019 and backed the company long before the generative artificial intelligence boom began with the launch of ChatGPT.
Amazon Web Services, the leader in cloud infrastructure, provides enterprises with access to all major AI models, including models from OpenAI, through a platform called Bedrock.
“Our microsoft Partnerships are the cornerstone of our success. “But it also limits our ability to meet businesses where they are. For many businesses, that is Bedrock,” Dresser wrote in the memo, which was seen by CNBC. “The inbound demand from our customers for this service since we announced the partnership in late February has been, frankly, staggering.”
Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
OpenAI is desperate to gain market share within the company, where rival Anthropic’s Claude model has established itself as the market leader. google Gemini is also actively competing. Claude’s momentum was the hottest topic at last week’s AI industry conference HumanX in San Francisco, with Arvind Jain, CEO of enterprise AI startup Glean, describing it as “Claudomania.”
“It’s become a religion. That’s the level of its mania,” Jain said in an interview at the event.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to convince investors of their strengthened positions as they prepare for initial public offerings as early as this year. Enterprise is critical to them as they pour money into AI, a trend that is driving down the value of public software companies and seeing them as increasingly vulnerable. Meanwhile, OpenAI was valued at more than $850 billion in its latest funding round in late March, a month after investors valued Anthropic at $380 billion.
Dresser told CNBC earlier this month that OpenAI’s enterprise business accounts for 40% of the company’s revenue and is “on track to reach parity” with its consumer business by the end of the year.
Dresser said in a Sunday memo that the market can be “noisy, volatile and distracting” and encouraged employees to focus on spending time with customers. She added that Anthropic’s strategy is built on “fear, restrictions, and the idea that a small, elite group should control AI,” but that OpenAI’s “positive message” will prevail over time.
Anthropic announced earlier this month that run-rate revenue was more than $30 billion, up from about $9 billion at the end of last year. Mr. Dresser claimed that Anthropic’s published run rate was “inflated” by about $8 billion.
“They use accounting techniques to make their profits appear larger than they really are, including increasing their revenue sharing with Amazon and Google,” Dresser wrote. “We are reporting Microsoft RevShareNet, which is in line with the standards we must adhere to as a public company.”
Anthropic says that while its cloud partners act as distribution channels, it recognizes gross revenue from sales through its partners because they are the principals in the transaction. The company maintains that its accounting treatment depends on the circumstances of each transaction and that its approach is consistent with GAAP accounting practices.
Dresser said Anthropic also made a “strategic mistake in not acquiring enough compute,” echoing comments OpenAI made in a separate note to investors on Thursday. The company said Anthropic is “operating on a meaningful small curve” and that its efforts are “making significant progress and expansion.” Anthropic announces agreement with Google; broadcom Earlier this month, it achieved “multi-gigawatts” of computing.
Anthropic representatives declined to comment for this article.
For OpenAI, the relationship with Microsoft remains what both companies describe as core and strategic, but there are signs of strain as one partner moves into the other’s turf. In mid-2024, Microsoft added OpenAI to its competitors list in its annual report. That list included perennial giants Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta.
OpenAI is increasingly turning its attention to other cloud providers, including: coreweave,Google, oraclefor its capacity, and last year Microsoft began public testing of a homegrown artificial intelligence model that could lead to enhancements to the Copilot assistant for consumers.
OpenAI hires former Slack CEO and longtime CEO Dresser sales force He was appointed chief revenue officer in December. She recently expanded her role to include commercial responsibilities as Brad Lightcap moved from executive director to a new role focused on “special projects”.
Dresser wrote that the company must “remain focused, work as one team, operate at the highest level of excellence, and move in the same direction.”
“The market is what we win. Let’s execute accordingly,” she wrote.
—CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this report.
WATCH: OpenAI launches attack against Anthropic in internal memo
