“With the growing role of OpenAI in all aspects of society, scalable and reliable computing power is more critical than ever. AWS is able to provide this, which is why OpenAI signed a partnership with Amazon. The deal is a significant one, as it shows that AWS can be the infrastructure backbone of AI computing.” Stepping up the pace in AI Amazon’s partnership with OpenAI comes as AWS faces growing competition from Microsoft and Google. After years of dominating the cloud computing market through AWS, Amazon has witnessed rivals like Microsoft and Google gaining ground over the past year or two. Amazon’s share of the cloud infrastructure market had fallen to approximately 29 per cent as of September, a notable decline from the 34 per cent it held shortly before the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022, according to estimates from Synergy Research Group. ​In its earnings report last week, Amazon also reported more than 20 per cent year-over-year revenue growth at AWS, beating analyst estimates. Growth that was eclipsed by Microsoft and Google, which reported cloud expansion of 40 per cent and 34 per cent, respectively. This decline was largely due to its competitors’ early partnerships with OpenAI. Just last week, Microsoft revealed a $250 billion commitment from OpenAI for its Azure cloud platform as part of a newly restructured partnership between the two companies. Meanwhile, Google has also inked multibillion-dollar chip and infrastructure deals with Anthropic and other AI players, underscoring the fierce competition among these tech giants to dominate the AI infrastructure market. Although Amazon’s deal is smaller compared to those of other cloud providers, experts noted that it still marks an important move for the company. Mamta Valechha, an analyst at Quilter Cheviot, commented, “While it is small relative to other deals OpenAI has made with other cloud providers, it represents a key first step in Amazon’s effort to partner with a company that is spending over a trillion dollars on computing power in the coming years.” In addition to the recent partnership with OpenAI, Amazon has been increasing its investment in artificial intelligence, with the unveiling of Project Rainier, a $11 billion AI data centre in Indiana, where startup Anthropic is training its models on Amazon’s in-house Trainium chip. Recently, the company raised its 2025 capital expenditure forecast from $118 billion to $125 billion, with CFO Brian Olsavsky indicating that technological investments are likely to continue increasing in 2026. Amazon is preparing for a truly agentic era with the OpenAI partnership However, the deal to use AWS infrastructure also has the potential to lead to a more extensive collaboration that could one day see ChatGPT AI bots buy products from within Amazon’s main shopping websites.   CI&T’s global director of retail strategy, Melissa Minkow, remarked that the news of this partnership further confirms that adopting ChatGPT as a shopping channel will be inevitable, rather than optional. “While ChatGPT isn’t going to be the only place consumers go to shop in the future, it will be a crucial channel, and I can see an important case for most retailers partnering because of that. ChatGPT will be a table-stakes channel for brands.” Chris Zuger, a senior marketer for digital marketing agency WebMarketers and an AI-driven brand strategist, believes that Amazon’s latest AI-centered moves signal more than just the company keeping up with the Joneses. He explained that this is a strategic redirection and recalibration on the retail giant’s part as it prepares for a world where search, ads, and commerce will converge within its own walls, rather than spilling out via Google or ChatGPT. “Product search will start and be on Amazon. They want to be the operating system for commerce and not the destination. That way, find search compare dies and they remain the first and overwhelming majority only choice,” Zuger wrote on LinkedIn. The end result of this move, if executed correctly, would be that Amazon becomes the sole dominant marketplace, product search, and ad platform. Zuger further explained that instead of having to pay Google to send buyers back to you, Amazon can keep shoppers locked within its own world and make advertisers pay the company for consumer attention. “They’re building a deep alligator-populated moat for the true agentic era.” He elaborated that, in his view, whoever controls shopping application programming interfaces (APIs), supply chains, fulfillment, payment rails, product graphs and so on controls commerce—not just part of it, but commerce itself. Ultimately, Zuger argued that Amazon wants to be the only viable entry and endpoint – the alpha and omega – not one of many. This vision is coming into sharper focus as the online retail giant accelerates its efforts to stay ahead in technological innovation. Further reading: Is Amazon’s 30,000 layoffs an AI-driven sign of the future?