With the frontier AI provider's decision to make its models available on Google Cloud, a new phase of the AI race is shaping up to be about catering to enterprises that require greater model choice on their chosen cloud infrastructure.
OpenAI and Google Cloud revealed on Wednesday that OpenAI’s models and Codex agentic workflows will now be available on Google Model Garden.
The Model Garden is a catalog of AI models inside the Google Cloud AI platform, which is part of the Gemini Enterprise Agent platform, formerly known as Vertex AI. OpenAI said its models will soon also be available in Google Antigravity, a platform that lets AI agents write, run, test and orchestrate code. It will also be coming to Gemini Agent soon.
Enterprise customers already on Google Cloud infrastructure will get access to OpenAI’s models in the environment they already use. The move enables enterprises to pair OpenAI’s models with Google Cloud’s built-in access controls, data governance and infrastructure.
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The availability of OpenAI’s models on Google comes after OpenAI ended its cloud exclusivity agreement with Google’s rival Microsoft and OpenAI debuted its models on AWS in April. This move makes OpenAI models available on all cloud providers.
“All these model providers are essentially trying to figure out how to increase their proliferation on multiple infrastructure estates,” said Sid Nag, founder and analyst at Tekonyx. “This is yet another one for OpenAI.”
Choices and OpenAI’s strategy
“This just makes it easier for anyone who wants to consume OpenAI models but also has a largely Google Cloud … framework in their environment to not have to make that decision to move away from Google just because they want an OpenAI model,” said David Nicholson, an analyst at Futurum Group.
For OpenAI, putting its models on Google Cloud strengthens its enterprise strategy. Over the last year, the ChatGPT creator -- which started out mainly as a vendor of consumer AI models -- has been trying to move from appealing to consumers toward enterprise clients.
“It’s something they didn’t do early on,” Nicholson said. “They didn’t understand how to engage enterprise clients.”
He said the model provider has changed since partnering with AWS and now seems better able to engage with enterprise customers.
“The key to OpenAI's success is that they replicate what they’ve started to do with AWS with GCP [Google Cloud Platform],” Nicholson continued.
Google’s benefit
For Google’s part, the partnership with OpenAI is also important because it can support enterprises that prefer its infrastructure but decide certain OpenAI models work for a certain workflow or application.
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“This just strengthens Google’s ability to retain the AI spending, regardless of which model customers select,” Nag said.
Ultimately, the deal suggests that, for enterprises, what matters is having the options they need to create custom AI applications, regardless of the AI model vendor orcloud infrastructure..
“Enterprises are not buying AI for AI sake, they’re not buying infrastructure for infrastructure's sake,” Nag said.
He added that if an enterprise is on a certain cloud infrastructure that doesn’t have the model it wants, it will now need to figure out how to use that model while remaining on with the cloud provider it is accustomed to.
“Nobody wants to go and do these things on their own, because stitching these things together is not for the faint of heart,” Nag said.
However, more choices could also leave enterprises unsure which model to use.
“If for every part of your infrastructure stack, you’re having to make a choice between five options, and it can get confusing,” Nicholson said. “But most enterprise customers would rather have that choice than not.”
About the Author
News Writer, AI Business
Esther Shittu has covered AI technologies and industry trends since 2021. As co-host of the Targeting AI podcast, she talks with experts, thought leaders and practitioners exploring critical AI developments. Before AI Business, she wrote for SearchEnterpriseAI, the New York Daily News, Bklyner and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. When she's not diving deep into the world of AI, she spends her time on passion projects and raising her three daughters.