Welcome to episode 322 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! We have BIG NEWS – Jonathan is back! He’s joined in the studio by Justin and Ryan to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news, including ongoing drama in the Microsoft/OpenAI drama, saying goodbye to data transfer fees (in the EU), M4 Power, and more. Let’s get started!  

Titles we almost went with this week

• EU Later, Egress Fees: Google’s Brexit from Data Transfer Charges


• The Keys to the Cosmos: Azure Unlocks Customer Control


• Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Google Splits LLM Inference for Better Performance


• OpenAI and Microsoft: From Exclusive to It’s Complicated 


• Google’s New Model Has Trust Issues (And That’s a Good Thing)


• Mac to the Future: AWS Brings M4 Power to the Cloud


• Oracle’s Cloud Nine: Stock Soars on Half-Trillion Dollar Dreams


• ChatGPT: From Chat Bot to Hat Bot (Everyone’s Wearing Different Professional Hats)


• Five Billion Reasons to Love British AI


• NVMe Gonna Give You Up: AWS Delivers the Storage Metrics You’ve Been Missing


• Tea and AI: OpenAI Crosses the Pond


• The Norway Bug Strikes Back: A New YAML Hope
  

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AI Is Going Great – Or How ML Makes Money 

01:33 Microsoft and OpenAI make a deal: Reading between the lines of their secretive new agreement – GeekWire

• Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding that will restructure their partnership, with OpenAI’s nonprofit entity receiving an equity stake exceeding $100 billion in a new public benefit corporation where Microsoft will play a major role.


• The deal addresses the AGI clause that previously allowed OpenAI to unilaterally dissolve the partnership upon achieving artificial general intelligence, which had been a significant risk for Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar investment.


• Both companies are diversifying their partnerships – Microsoft is now using Anthropic’s technology for some Office 365 AI features, while OpenAI has signed a $300 billion computing contract with Oracle over five years.


• Microsoft’s exclusivity on OpenAI cloud workloads has been replaced with a right of first refusal, enabling OpenAI to participate in the $500 billion Stargate AI project with Oracle and other partners.


• The restructuring allows OpenAI to raise capital for its mission while ensuring the nonprofit’s resources grow proportionally, with plans to use funds for community impact, including a recently launched $50 million grant program.

ALSO:

OpenAI and Microsoft sign preliminary deal to revise partnership terms – Ars Technica

• OpenAI and Microsoft signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to revise their partnership terms, requiring formal contract finalization as OpenAI transitions from nonprofit to for-profit structure, with Microsoft holding over $13 billion in investments.


• The partnership revision addresses growing competition between the companies for AI customers and OpenAI’s need for compute capacity beyond what Microsoft Azure can currently provide, leading OpenAI to explore additional cloud partnerships.


• Contract complications include provisions that would restrict Microsoft’s access to OpenAI technology once AGI is achieved, now defined by both companies as AI systems generating at least $100 billion in profit rather than technical capabilities.


• OpenAI abandoned its original full for-profit conversion plan after regulatory pressure and lawsuits from Elon Musk, who argues the shift violates OpenAI’s founding nonprofit mission to benefit humanity.


• This restructuring impacts cloud infrastructure planning as hyperscalers must balance exclusive partnerships against the reality that leading AI companies need multi-cloud strategies to meet their massive compute demands.

02:59 Justin – “I’m not convinced that we can get to true AGI with the way that we’re building these models. I think there’s things that could lead us to breakthroughs that would get us to AGI, but the transformer model, and the way we do this, and predictive text, is not AGI. As good as you can be at predicting things, doesn’t mean you can have conscious thought.” 

07:45 Introducing Upgrades to Codex

• OpenAI upgraded Codex to better translate natural language into code with improvements in handling complex programming tasks, edge cases, and expanded multi-language support. 


• This enhances developer productivity in cloud-native applications where rapid prototyping and automation are essential.


• The architecture changes and training data updates enable more accurate code generation, which could reduce development time for cloud infrastructure automation scripts, API integrations, and serverless function creation.


• Enhanced Codex capabilities directly benefit cloud developers by automating repetitive coding tasks like writing boilerplate code for cloud service integrations, database queries, and deployment configurations.


• The improved edge case handling makes Codex more reliable for production use cases, potentially enabling automated code generation for cloud monitoring scripts, data pipeline creation, and infrastructure-as-code templates.


• These upgrades position Codex as a practical tool for accelerating cloud application development, particularly for teams building microservices, implementing CI/CD pipelines, or managing multi-cloud deployments.

10:14 Jonathan – “I think Codex is probably better at some classes of coding. I think it’s great at React; you want to build a UI, use Codex and use OpenAI stuff. You want to build a backend app written in C or Python or something else? I’d use Claude Code. There seem to be different focuses.”

13:24 How people are using ChatGPT

• OpenAI’s analysis reveals ChatGPT usage patterns across diverse professional domains, with significant adoption in software development, content creation, education, and business operations, demonstrating the technology’s broad applicability beyond initial expectations.


• The data shows developers using ChatGPT for code generation, debugging, and documentation tasks, while educators leverage it for lesson planning and personalized learning experiences, indicating practical integration into existing cloud-based workflows.


• Business users report productivity gains through automated report generation, data analysis assistance, and customer service applications, suggesting potential for deeper integration with cloud platforms and enterprise systems.


• Usage patterns highlight the need for cloud providers to optimize infrastructure for conversational AI workloads, including considerations for API rate limits, response latency, and cost management for high-volume applications.


• The findings underscore growing demand for AI-powered tools in cloud environments, with implications for platform providers to develop specialized services for LLM deployment, fine-tuning, and integration with existing cloud services.

14:51 Jonathan – “I wish it was more detailed; like how many people are talking to it like it’s a person? How many people are doing nonsense (like on) Reddit?”

17:42 Introducing Stargate UK

• OpenAI’s <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=298563b6c9f44d83b35f12a1cdc0d56cee978072