OpenAI, Google partnership targets enterprise model choice

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.

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.

“It’s something they didn’t do early on,” Nicholson said. “They didn’t understand how to engage enterprise clients.”

Google’s benefit

However, more choices could also leave enterprises unsure which model to use.