Tech mega-deals are a distraction, not a breakthrough

The tech world is abuzz with news of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and OpenAI signing a seven-year, $38 billion cloud computing deal, a partnership that promises high-powered AI advancements through massive infrastructure investments. AWS is providing OpenAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, including clusters of next-generation GB200 and GB300 chips networked via Amazon’s UltraServers. The rollout is already underway, aiming to scale tens of millions of CPUs and GPUs through 2026, with optional expansion into 2027.

The headlines may scream innovation, but let’s step back for a moment. While the tech press frames this deal as monumental, the reality is far less compelling for the vast majority of enterprises. At its core, this is a tech-to-tech agreement focused on infrastructure provisioning and back-end optimization of scale—hardly an everyday concern for most enterprises. Instead of delivering tangible solutions to business users or advancing practical enterprise use cases, mega-deals like this might actually distract both technology providers and enterprises from the outcomes that matter most.

Who benefits?

From the technology provider’s perspective, multi-billion-dollar mega-deals seem to make sense. AWS wants to strengthen its lead in cloud infrastructure while OpenAI seeks to ensure scalable compute for training and operating its generative AI models. The partnership gives OpenAI the GPU horsepower to maintain momentum for ChatGPT as well as future model development. In return, Amazon positions itself as a critical player in the generative AI race, potentially loosening the symbiotic ties OpenAI has with Microsoft. Both companies are seeking dominance in a competitive market.

But from the enterprise user’s perspective, this deal will have little, if any, immediate impact. The majority of enterprises aren’t concerned with OpenAI’s partners for GPUs. They aren’t clamoring for AWS UltraServers or Nvidia GB300 clusters. They care about solving day-to-day operational challenges: managing costs, adopting automation, easing the burden of IT operations, and delivering value to their customers. This deal won’t help them build better applications faster, nor does it address the kinds of problems CIOs and IT teams encounter in the trenches.

At best, these deals are neutral for enterprise users. At worst, they distract the very providers who should be focusing on innovating for their customers, not trying to impress their competitors.

A distraction from enterprise problems

In theory, partnerships like AWS and OpenAI’s should trickle down to the average enterprise in the form of better tools and services. But the ongoing pattern in the tech landscape is that whenever major providers form enormous partnerships, the focus inevitably shifts inward to infrastructure optimization, integration, and control of resources. The energy goes toward accommodating complex arrangements between the tech players themselves, not meeting the pressing needs of business users.

Enterprises, by contrast, operate in a world of brutal simplicity. They’re trying to migrate workloads to the cloud without downtime. They’re automating business workflows for better efficiency. They’re investing in data analytics to improve customer experience. Most simply need tools that don’t require a massive learning curve or specialized knowledge of GPU clusters or AI model hosting.

When mega tech partnerships dominate the tech industry’s attention, providers risk losing sight of the practical challenges facing their own customers. Instead of building technologies that make life easier for enterprises, they get caught up in perfecting back-end systems that have no visible impact on a company’s bottom line. Simply put, enterprises don’t care whether AWS inked a billion-dollar deal with OpenAI or any other AI leader; they just want the products they use to be better, more affordable, and easier to deploy.

Enterprises need relevance, not scale

The tech industry often conflates scale with accomplishment. The AWS-OpenAI deal is being touted as the largest AI infrastructure partnership to date, involving tens of millions of CPUs and GPUs. No doubt, that’s impressive from a technical standpoint. But the more critical question is whether this scale translates into relevant solutions for enterprises.

For most businesses, “AI” remains a buzzword. Companies are only beginning to implement chatbots, predictive analytics, and workflow optimization using AI. Smaller enterprises have yet to fully embrace cloud-native applications, let alone invest in customized AI deployments. In such a landscape, offering hundreds of thousands of GPUs and ultra-low-latency chips adds zero relevance to their lives. This isn’t a case of scaling solutions to meet demand; it’s a case of scaling capabilities that are far removed from the average enterprise reality.

Relevance, by contrast, looks like AI-backed tools that integrate seamlessly with email workflows or cloud management platforms. Relevance is offering midsize businesses affordable, out-of-the-box solutions that improve customer service, reduce operational scaling issues, or future-proof legacy systems. Relevance does not require $38 billion infrastructure partnerships. It requires listening to enterprises.

Tech users shouldn’t foot the bill

Another concern with deals of this scope is the eventual trickle-down cost to end-users. Building and maintaining the massive AI clusters outlined in the AWS-OpenAI agreement isn’t cheap, and big tech companies rarely absorb those costs themselves. Whether indirectly tied to higher cloud service rates, increased licensing costs, or premium enterprise tools, it’s the enterprise users who often bear the brunt of financing these power plays.

Rather than investing in smarter pricing models or lower-cost AI implementations, tech providers focus on inflating their infrastructure capabilities to gain competitive positioning. Generative AI is powerful and exciting, but these deals push it in directions that drive competition between providers rather than innovation for enterprises.

A better benchmark for progress

Ultimately, these mega-deals are a symptom of the tech industry’s obsession with scale and dominance. The press devotes excessive coverage to partnerships like AWS and OpenAI’s, as though they portend the next wave of technological innovation. It’s time to shift the conversation. Rather than celebrating contracts measured in billions of dollars, we should focus on what matters to business users: solving real-world problems, improving accessibility, and delivering tools that make operations more efficient, not more complex.

The average enterprise will never care about the back-end architecture of generative AI models or GPU provisioning. We, as an industry, need to let go of the hype and start delivering value where it counts. Mega-deals may keep tech providers in the headlines, but for most cloud users, they’re meaningless. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.