The OpenAI Amazon partnership took center stage this week after OpenAI’s chief revenue officer sent an internal memo to staff, describing the alliance as a key driver for the company’s enterprise growth while criticizing constraints imposed by its long-standing relationship with Microsoft.
Denise Dresser, who joined OpenAI as chief revenue officer in December after serving as CEO of Slack and a longtime Salesforce executive, sent the memo on Sunday. CNBC viewed the document. Dresser recently expanded her role to include commercial responsibilities previously held by Brad Lightcap, who moved to a new position focused on “special projects.”
Microsoft Relationship Described as a Constraint
“Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock,” Dresser wrote in the memo. Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock platform gives companies access to major artificial intelligence models, including those from OpenAI. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019.
The memo arrives less than two months after Amazon said it plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership. Dresser said inbound demand from customers for the Amazon offering has been “frankly staggering” since the deal was announced in late February. Microsoft declined to comment on the memo.
OpenAI Amazon Partnership Targets Enterprise Market Share
Enterprise revenue currently makes up 40% of OpenAI’s total revenue, Dresser told CNBC earlier this month. She added that the enterprise segment is “on track to reach parity” with the company’s consumer business by the end of 2026. The enterprise market has become a critical battleground, as companies across industries continue to pour money into AI tools and infrastructure.
OpenAI’s main rival in the enterprise segment is Anthropic, whose Claude model has established a strong position in the market. The topic dominated conversation at the HumanX AI industry conference in San Francisco last week. Arvind Jain, CEO of enterprise AI startup Glean, described the enthusiasm around Claude as “Claude mania,” adding: “It has become a religion, that’s the level of that mania.”
OpenAI Challenges Anthropic’s Revenue Claims
Anthropic said earlier this month that its run-rate revenue has surpassed $30 billion, up from roughly $9 billion at the end of last year. However, Dresser alleged in the memo that Anthropic’s stated run rate is “inflated” by around $8 billion. “They use accounting treatment that makes revenue look bigger than it is, including grossing up rev share with Amazon and Google,” she wrote.
“We report Microsoft rev share net, which is more inline with standards we would be held to as a public company.”
Denise Dresser, Chief Revenue Officer, OpenAI
Anthropic has said it recognizes gross revenue on partner sales because it is the principal in those transactions, with cloud partners acting as distribution channels. The company argues its approach is consistent with GAAP accounting practices. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment for this story.
Compute Gap and Broader Cloud Strategy
Dresser also said Anthropic made a “strategic misstep to not acquire enough compute,” a claim that echoed a separate OpenAI memo sent to investors on Thursday. OpenAI said Anthropic is “operating on a meaningfully smaller curve” and that its own compute ramp is “materially ahead and widening.” Anthropic, meanwhile, announced a deal with Google and Broadcom for “multiple gigawatts” of compute earlier this month.
OpenAI has increasingly turned to other cloud providers, including CoreWeave, Google, and Oracle, for capacity beyond what Microsoft supplies. In mid-2024, Microsoft added OpenAI to the list of competitors in its annual report, alongside Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta. Last year, Microsoft also began publicly testing a homegrown AI model that could enhance its Copilot assistant.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing for potential initial public offerings as soon as this year. OpenAI was valued at more than $850 billion in its latest fundraising round in late March. Investors valued Anthropic at $380 billion a month earlier, in February. Dresser closed the memo by telling staff: “The market is ours to win, let’s execute accordingly.”
