Closing Time: OpenAI moves in with a rival

OpenAI was founded partly as a counterweight to Google. On Wednesday it agreed to sell its models through Google’s cloud. OpenAI’s models will be available to developers in Google Cloud’s model garden and its Antigravity coding tool in the coming weeks, CNBC reports.

The deal finishes a quick unbundling. Less than six months ago, Microsoft lost its exclusive license to OpenAI’s technology, and the very next day Amazon unveiled plans to host OpenAI’s models. With Google on board, OpenAI is now on all three of the biggest cloud platforms in the US.

For OpenAI, the logic is about reach. The company built its name on ChatGPT, a consumer product, and it now needs big businesses to pay for its models too. Many of those businesses already buy their computing from Google, so meeting them there removes a reason to say no.

For Google, it is a bet that being a neutral marketplace pays more than keeping rivals out. Its cloud business has been on a tear, with growth accelerating to about 82% in the second quarter from 63% in the first, partly on demand for AI models and custom chips. Amazon and Microsoft grew their clouds 37% and 42% in the same quarter.

The two companies are not strangers. OpenAI already rents Google’s computing power to run ChatGPT and its developer tools, a deal struck last year. Now Google will also sell OpenAI’s models to its own customers, even as Gemini competes with them for the same corporate budgets.

The timing gives investors something to chew on. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all report quarterly results next week, and each can now point to the same OpenAI models as part of its pitch.

Elsewhere in AI today:

Financial Times reports Meta plans to create a new class of non-voting shares, handed to existing shareholders through a two-for-one stock split. The structure would let Meta raise money for its AI spending by selling stock without weakening Mark Zuckerberg’s voting control.

Politico digs into the draft safety bill Anthropic has been pitching to lawmakers. It would let the government halt a model’s release only if it posed a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than 50 deaths or $1 billion in damage from a bioweapon, a cyberattack or a model escaping its developer’s control, and only with a federal judge’s approval.

The Register reports Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared the stage at GTC Berlin with a flock of small duck-shaped robots as he pitched AI agents and robotics to Europe. Huang also unveiled Agile ONE SN, a humanoid robot platform for researchers due in early 2027, during a keynote briefly interrupted by environmental protesters.

Business Insider reports Amazon is taking ownership of billions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia server racks before it has the power to run them. Under a program called Early Rack Receipt, AWS expected about $5 billion of racks in August and roughly $3 billion a month after that, with some stored in warehouses until sites have enough electricity.

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Markets

The Nasdaq led Wall Street higher on Wednesday, rising more than 1%, after strong results from SpaceX and Super Micro Computer lifted appetite for AI stocks, according to Reuters. The S&P 500 gained about 0.6% and the Dow added about 0.7%, while communication services stocks held back the gains. 74 of the 86 AI and tech stocks we track closed higher.

Super Micro topped our list, jumping 9.6% after the AI server maker forecast quarterly revenue and profit margins above Wall Street estimates. Cybersecurity names Zscaler and Okta rose 7.8% and 7.5%, and software makers MongoDB and Datadog gained 6.7% and 6.5%.

The few decliners were scattered. Voice AI company SoundHound fell 1.9%, ad-tech firm AppLovin slipped 1.7%, Alphabet lost 1.6% as communication services lagged, Oracle dropped 1.6% and chip-equipment maker Lam Research eased 1.0%.

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Prices are Wednesday’s U.S. cash close, October 21, 2026 (vs. Tuesday’s close). Market data is a snapshot, not live.