In a world where AI empires race for dominance, a curious alliance is unfolding: OpenAI is now drawing compute power through a layered partnership involving Google Cloud and CoreWeave. Essentially, CoreWeave will supply GPUs to Google, which in turn will resell that capacity to OpenAI. It’s a clever workaround that gives the fast-growing AI company more flexibility without breaking its existing Azure ties.
This arrangement arrives on the heels of a disclosed deal between Google Cloud and OpenAI. Despite DeepMind’s rivalry with ChatGPT, Google appears to have taken a pragmatic step: leasing compute both directly and through CoreWeave. That reflects OpenAI’s voracious appetite for GPU horsepower—and its willingness to build alliances beyond a single provider.
To contextualize, OpenAI already contracted CoreWeave in May 2025 for a substantial $4 billion top-up to its initial $11.9 billion cloud commitment. Meanwhile, the so-called “Stargate” collaboration among Oracle, SoftBank, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and OpenAI is poised to deliver dedicated campuses. Oracle itself reportedly is eyeing 5 gigawatts of data center capacity in the U.S. for the venture.
A clever side effect emerges from this multi-tiered model: OpenAI navigates around exclusivity constraints while enjoying diverse infrastructure options. After relying heavily on Microsoft Azure until mid‑2024, OpenAI now sources compute across a network that also includes Google and Oracle, in addition to existing relationships with CoreWeave.
Viewed through a strategic lens, this signals a maturation of OpenAI’s supply-chain thinking. Instead of putting all its chips in one basket, the company stitches together a resilient ecosystem capable of scaling with AI’s ever-hungry demands. For cloud providers and GPU specialists alike, this signals a pivot from vendor rivalry toward symbiosis in order to serve AI developers’ unrelenting infrastructure needs.
With AI models ballooning in size and complexity, access to reliable GPU fleets has become the linchpin of both progress and competition. What once seemed like vendor-imposed lock-in now morphs into opportunity—as companies band together in cascading cloud deals. And for OpenAI, this compute chain might just be the secret to fueling its next wave of breakthroughs.
