Cloud exclusivity as AI battleground

Major cloud providers are using exclusive contracts with AI labs to control who hosts, packages, and sells advanced models. Legal fights—like Microsoft threatening to sue OpenAI and Amazon over Frontier being hosted on AWS despite an Azure exclusivity clause—show these agreements are now strategic levers that shape market structure, prices, and operational resilience. — Which cloud hosts which AI model matters for competition, antitrust, national security, and the public’s access to critical AI services.