Image: Amazon Web Services OpenAI Brings Codex and GPT-5.5 to Amazon Bedrock in Limited Preview
AWS and OpenAI expanded their partnership on April 28, putting Codex, GPT-5.5, and a new Managed Agents service into Amazon Bedrock for enterprise teams that want OpenAI's models inside AWS infrastructure.
AWS and OpenAI announced an expanded partnership on April 28 at the “What’s Next with AWS” event. Three new services are now in limited preview on Amazon Bedrock: OpenAI’s frontier language models, Codex running through Bedrock APIs, and Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI.
The pitch is straightforward. Enterprise teams that already run workloads on AWS can now access OpenAI’s coding agent and models through the same infrastructure, IAM permissions, compliance frameworks, and billing relationships they already have. No separate OpenAI account required.
What’s in the Preview
OpenAI models on Bedrock. GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.4 are both available in preview. They come with the standard Bedrock enterprise controls: IAM-based access management, AWS PrivateLink for private connectivity, guardrails, encryption at rest and in transit, and AWS CloudTrail logging for audit trails. The models appear in the Bedrock model catalog alongside models from Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, and others.
Codex on Bedrock. The OpenAI coding agent — the same one more than four million people use weekly to write, refactor, explain, and test code — is accessible through Amazon Bedrock. Teams authenticate with AWS credentials and route Codex through Bedrock APIs. The integration works with the Codex CLI, the Codex desktop app, and the VS Code extension. For organizations that want to run Codex without direct OpenAI API accounts, this gives them a path in.
Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents. This is the new service in the stack. Bedrock Managed Agents, powered by OpenAI, lets you deploy production-ready agents that use OpenAI’s frontier models and agent harness, but run inside AWS infrastructure. Each agent gets its own identity, logs its actions, and operates within the customer’s AWS environment rather than OpenAI’s. The service uses Amazon Bedrock AgentCore for compute.
The Enterprise Angle
The practical reason this matters for large teams is consolidation. Billing for OpenAI models and Codex through Bedrock counts toward existing AWS cloud commitments — the Enterprise Discount Agreements most large AWS customers already have. That simplifies procurement and means AI tooling spend rolls into existing contracts rather than requiring a separate vendor relationship.
The compliance picture also matters at this scale. A team running on AWS has already gone through the work of configuring IAM roles, setting up PrivateLink, enabling CloudTrail auditing, and establishing encryption policies. Getting all of that for OpenAI models at no extra configuration cost is a real operational benefit, particularly for regulated industries.
Context: Why This Partnership Now
Both companies have moved toward enterprise sales as the primary growth channel. OpenAI needs distribution at the infrastructure layer. AWS needs top-tier models to compete with Microsoft Azure, which has had exclusive OpenAI model access through its own tight partnership. The “What’s Next with AWS” announcement brings AWS to parity — at least in terms of model access — for organizations that prefer AWS over Azure.
The Managed Agents product in particular looks like a direct response to Azure’s own agent hosting offerings. Running production agents on AWS-managed compute, with OpenAI’s agent harness but AWS’s reliability and compliance stack, is a useful middle ground for teams that don’t want to manage agent infrastructure themselves.
What Limited Preview Means
All three offerings are in limited preview. AWS is collecting registrations through the Bedrock OpenAI landing page. General availability timelines haven’t been announced.
For teams interested in Codex specifically, the CLI and VS Code paths through Bedrock APIs are the same tools Codex users already have — the difference is just where authentication and billing flow. If your team already has Codex CLI set up with OpenAI credentials, the Bedrock version is a reconfiguration rather than a new tool adoption.
Sources: AWS — Amazon Bedrock now offers OpenAI models, Codex, and Managed Agents, OpenAI — OpenAI models, Codex, and Managed Agents come to AWS, AWS Blog — Top announcements of What’s Next with AWS, 2026, AWS Weekly Roundup — May 4, 2026