For years, executives at Microsoft have become accustomed to tussling with OpenAI over the terms of the companies’ complicated business partnership, which gave Microsoft exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s technology to cloud customers.

Then two months ago, the ChatGPT maker announced a surprise deal to sell its AI to businesses through Amazon, a Microsoft archrival. While OpenAI thought its contract with Microsoft allowed for the Amazon arrangement, Microsoft disagreed. So Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, longtime allies whose interests diverged as OpenAI’s sales exploded, embarked on a series of meetings in recent weeks, according to people who spoke to leaders at both companies.