OpenAI brings GPT-6 Astra and Codex to Google Cloud as it widens distribution beyond Microsoft

OpenAI is bringing its frontier AI models, including GPT-6 Astra, and its Codex coding tool to Google Cloud in the coming weeks. The models will sit in Gemini's Model Garden and be sold through Google Cloud Marketplace, and Reuters reported that customers can use their existing Google Cloud spending commitments for the purchases. TNW, citing Google Cloud's announcement, said GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna are already in private preview for select enterprise customers, with general availability to follow.

The deal is a notable shift for a company whose models were long available to cloud customers mainly through Microsoft's Azure. Reuters reported that OpenAI's exclusive distribution arrangement with MSFT expired in April, and TNW noted that Amazon Web Services began hosting the models after that; OpenAI said Microsoft remains its primary cloud partner. For GOOGL, it means Google Cloud can now offer OpenAI's models alongside its own Gemini and Anthropic's, the pitch Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian framed as giving customers a broad selection of models. Moor Insights analyst Mike Leone, quoted by Axios, put the trade-off plainly: Gemini now has to win those customers with OpenAI sitting right next to it.

The announcement also comes as OpenAI pursues roughly $30 billion of new funding at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion to support 26 gigawatts of computing capacity plans with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom. More distribution channels give OpenAI more ways to turn that compute into enterprise revenue, and for Google the arrangement brings more AI workloads onto its cloud.

What to watch: how quickly the models move from private preview to general availability, whether enterprise customers shift committed Google Cloud spend toward OpenAI models, and how Alphabet, Microsoft and AMZN describe AI cloud demand when all three report quarterly results next week.