Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal
176 points
2 hours ago
| 26 comments
| bloomberg.com
| HN
Gift Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-27/microsoft...

https://openai.com/index/next-phase-of-microsoft-partnership...

delis-thumbs-7e
1 hour ago
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It’s insane how they talk about AGI, like it was some scientifically qualifiable thing that is certain to happen any time now. When I have become the javelin Olympic Champion, I will buy a vegan ice cream to everyone with a HN account.
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no_wizard
3 minutes ago
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This is all happening as I predicted. OpenAI is oversold and their aggressive PR campaign has set them up with unrealistic expectations. I raised alot of eyebrow at the Microsoft deal to begin with. It seemed overvalued even if all they were trading was mostly Azure compute
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CWwdcdk7h
1 hour ago
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It sounds really similar to Uber pitch about how they are going to have monopoly as soon as they replace those pesky drivers with own fleet of self driving cars. That was supposed to be their competitive edge against other taxi apps. In the end they sold ATG at end of 2020 :D
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ambicapter
1 minute ago
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ATH?
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PurpleRamen
1 hour ago
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They redefined AGI to be an economical thing, so they can continue making up their stories. All that talk is really just business, no real science in the room there.
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> They redefined AGI to be an economical thing

Huh. Source? I mean, typical OpenAI bullshit, but would love to know how they defined it.

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a2128
8 minutes ago
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Around the end of 2024, it was reported that OpenAI and Microsoft agreed that for the purposes of their exclusivity agreement, AGI will be achieved when their AI system generates $100 billion in profit: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/26/microsoft-and-openai-have-...
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JumpCrisscross
39 seconds ago
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> OpenAI and Microsoft agreed that for the purposes of their exclusivity agreement, AGI will be achieved when their AI system generates $100 billion in profit

Wow. Maybe they spelled it out as aggregate gross income :P.

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wrs
7 minutes ago
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It’s a system that generates $100 billion in profit. [0]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/26/microsoft-and-openai-have-...

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binary0010
49 minutes ago
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OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity

From: https://openai.com/charter/

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karmasimida
16 minutes ago
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> some scientifically qualifiable thing that is certain to happen any time now.

If you present GPT 5.5 to me 2 years ago, I will call it AGI.

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wongarsu
9 minutes ago
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It performs at a usable level across a wide range of tasks. I'm not sure about two years ago, but ten years ago we would have called it an AGI. As opposed to "regular AI" where you have to assemble a training set for your specific problem, then train an AI on it before you can get your answers.

Now our idea of what qualifies as AGI has shifted substantially. We keep looking at what we have and decide that that can't possibly be AGI, our definition of AGI must have been wrong

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nromiun
1 minute ago
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If you present ELIZA to people some will think it is AGI today.

There is a reason so many scams happen with technology. It is too easy to fool people.

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3form
2 minutes ago
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... until you actually, like, use it and find out all the limitations it has.
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BoredPositron
13 minutes ago
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GPT 4 was 3 years ago... it's iterative enhancement.
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lucaslazarus
1 hour ago
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It’s pretty much a religious eschatology at this point
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renticulous
13 minutes ago
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Progess is generally salami slicing just as escalation in geopolitics. Not a step function.

Russian Invasion - Salami Tactics | Yes Prime Minister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg-UqIIvang

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rtkwe
1 hour ago
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It feels like they have to say/believe it because it's kind of the only thing that can justify the costs being poured into it and the cost it will need to charge eventually (barring major optimizations) to actually make money on users.
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AndrewKemendo
9 minutes ago
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> some scientifically qualifiable thing that is certain to happen any time now

Your position is a tautology given there is no (and likely will never be) collectively agreed upon definition of AGI. If that is true then nobody will ever achieve anything like AGI, because it’s as made up of a concept as unicorns and fairies.

Is your position that AGI is in the same ontological category as unicorns and Thor and Russell’s teapot?

Is there’s any question at this point that humans won’t be able to fully automate any desired action in the future?

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HumblyTossed
1 hour ago
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The continued fleecing of investors.
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renticulous
9 minutes ago
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Investors are typically people with surplus money to invest. Progress cannot be made without trial and error. So fleecing of investors for the greater good of humanity is something I shall allow.
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hx8
1 hour ago
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Do the investments make sense if AGI is not less than 10 years away?
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> Do the investments make sense if AGI is not less than 10 years away?

They can. If one consolidated the AI industry into a single monopoly, it would probably be profitable. That doesn't mean in its current state it can't succumb to ruionous competition. But the AGI talk seems to be mostly aimed at retail investors and philospher podcasters than institutional capital.

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antupis
54 seconds ago
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Thing is that distillation is so easy that it would also need large scale regulatory capture to keep smaller competitors out.
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iewj
1 hour ago
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What kind of ludicrous statement is this? Any monopoly with viable economics for profit with no threat of competition yields monopoly profits…
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> Any monopoly with viable economics for profit with no threat of competition yields monopoly profits

"With viable economics" is the point.

My "ludicrous statement" is a back-of-the-envelope test for whether an industry is nonsense. For comparison, consolidating all of the Pets.com competitors in the late 1990s would not have yielded a profitable company.

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eieiw
1 hour ago
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Very convenient to leave out Amazon in your back of the envelope test, whose internal metrics were showing a path toward quasi-monopoly profits.

Do you argue in good faith?

There’s a difference between being too early vs being nonsense.

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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> Very convenient to leave out Amazon in your back of the envelope test, who’s internal metrics were showing a path toward quasi-monopoly profits

Not in the 1990s. The American e-commerce industry was structurally unprofitable prior to the dot-com crash, an event Amazon (and eBay) responded responded to by fundamentally changing their businesses. Amazon bet on fulfillment. eBay bet on payments. Both represented a vertical integration that illustrates the point–the original model didn't work.

> There’s a difference between being too early vs being nonsense

When answering the question "do the investments make sense," not really. You're losing your money either way.

The American AI industry appears to have "viable economics for profit" without AGI. That doesn't guarantee anyone will earn them. But it's not a meaningless conclusion. (Though I'd personally frame it as a hypothesis I'm leaning towards.)

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SkyEyedGreyWyrm
1 hour ago
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Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto explained the failures of many dotcom startups and Amazon's later success in the field (in part) to the fact that dotcom era delivery was done by highly trained, highly compensated, unionized in-company workers, meanwhile Amazon prevents unions, contracts (or contracted, I'm not up to date on this) companies for delivery and has exploitative working conditions with high turnover, the economics are very different and are a big contributor to their success
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Maxatar
1 hour ago
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>"...viable economics for profit..."

OP did not include this requirement in their post because doing so would make the claim trivially true.

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rapind
1 hour ago
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Best way to achieve AGI: Redefine AGI.
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2ndorderthought
7 minutes ago
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They already did that, and AI. That's how we got into this mess.
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jrflo
1 hour ago
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The investments don't make sense.
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RobRivera
1 hour ago
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Make mine p p p p p p vicodin
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otabdeveloper4
1 hour ago
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> AGI

We already have several billion useless NGI's walking around just trying to keep themselves alive.

Are we sure adding more GI's is gonna help?

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theplatman
1 hour ago
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when i realized that sama isn't that much of an ai researcher, it became clearer that this is more akin to a group delusion for hype purposes than a real possibility
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iewj
1 hour ago
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He’s a glorified portfolio manager (questionable how good he actually is given the results vs Anthropic and how quickly they closed the valuation gap with far less money invested) + expert hype man to raise money for risky projects.
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lokar
1 hour ago
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From the reporting I’ve read his main attributes are being a sociopath with an amazing ability to manipulate people 1:1
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sourraspberry
1 hour ago
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You can read the leaked emails from the Musk lawsuit.

At the very least, Ilya Sutskever genuinely believed it, even when they were just making a DOTA bot, and not for hype purposes.

I know he's been out of OpenAI for a while, but if his thinking trickled down into the company's culture, which given his role and how long he was there I would say seems likely, I don't think it's all hype.

Grand delusion, perhaps.

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stavros
1 hour ago
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At this point, AGI is either here, or perpetually two years away, depending on your definition.
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greybeard69
1 hour ago
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Full Self-Driving 2.0
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xienze
1 hour ago
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It's always been this way. I remember, speaking of Microsoft, when they came to my school around 2002 or so giving a talk on AI. They very confidently stated that AGI had already been "solved", we know exactly how to do it, only problem is the hardware. But they estimated that would come in about ten years...
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jakeydus
1 hour ago
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I knew flappy bird was a bigger deal than it got credit for. Didn’t realize it was agi until just now.
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ModernMech
1 hour ago
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AGI is right around the corner, and we're all going to be rich, there's going to be abundance for everyone, universal high income, everyone will live in a penthouse...

...just please stop burning our warehouses and blocking our datacenters.

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nikeyshon
1 hour ago
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Where do I sign up?
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someguyiguess
1 hour ago
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Any sufficiently complex LLM is indistinguishable from AGI
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> Any sufficiently complex LLM is indistinguishable from AGI

Isn't this tautology? We've de facto defined AGI as a "sufficiently complex LLM."

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Schlagbohrer
1 hour ago
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Yes! Same logic as the financials, in which the companies pass back and forth the same $200 Billion promissory note.
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izzydata
1 hour ago
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If we take that statement as fact then I don't believe we are even close to an LLM being sufficiently complex enough.

However, I don't think it is even true. LLMs may not even be on the right track to achieving AGI and without starting from scratch down an alternate path it may never happen.

LLMs to me seem like a complicated database lookup. Storage and retrieval of information is just a single piece of intelligence. There must be more to intelligence than a statistical model of the probable next piece of data. Where is the self learning without intervention by a human. Where is the output that wasn't asked for?

At any rate. No amount of hype is going to get me to believe AGI is going to happen soon. I'll believe it when I see it.

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esafak
1 hour ago
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Some might be missing the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
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_jab
2 hours ago
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This agreement feels so friendly towards OpenAI that it's not obvious to me why Microsoft accepted this. I guess Microsoft just realized that the previous agreement was kneecapping OpenAI so much that the investment was at risk, especially with serious competition now coming from Anthropic?
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DanielHB
1 hour ago
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Microsoft is a major shareholder of OpenAI, they don't want their investment to go to 0. You don't just take a loss on a multiple-digit billion investment.
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dkrich
1 hour ago
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Probably more that they are compute constrained. In his latest post Ben Thompson talks about how Microsoft had to use their own infrastructure and supplant outside users in the process so this is probably to free up compute.
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dinosor
2 hours ago
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> Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI.

I feel this looks like a nice thing to have given they remain the primary cloud provider. If Azure improves it's overall quality then I don't see why this ends up as a money printing press as long as OpenAI brings good models?

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aurareturn
1 hour ago
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Does this mean Microsoft gets OpenAI's models for "free" without having to pay them a dime until 2032?

And on top of that, OpenAI still has to pay Microsoft a share of their revenue made on AWS/Google/anywhere until 2030?

And Microsoft owns 27% of OpenAI, period?

That's a damn good deal for Microsoft. Likely the investment that will keep Microsoft's stock relevant for years.

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dzonga
15 minutes ago
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own 27%. but are entitled to OpenAI profits of 49% for eternity (if OpenAI is profitable or government steps in)
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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OpenAI was also threatening to accuse "Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior during their partnership," an "effort [which] could involve seeking federal regulatory review of the terms of the contract for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign" [1].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-and-microsoft-tensions-ar...

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someguyiguess
1 hour ago
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Pot? Meet Kettle.
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lokar
1 hour ago
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Does anyone expect azure quality to improve? Has it improved at all in the last 3 years? Does leadership at MS think it needs to improve?

I doubt it

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jakeydus
1 hour ago
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Don’t worry I’m sure there’s a few products without copilot integration still. They’ll get to them before too long.
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airstrike
2 hours ago
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Kagi Translate was kind enough to turn this from LinkedIn Speak to English:

The Microsoft and OpenAI situation just got messy.

We had to rewrite the contract because the old one wasn't working for anyone. Basically, we’re trying to make it look like we’re still friends while we both start seeing other people. Here is what’s actually happening:

1. Microsoft is still the main guy, but if they can't keep up with the tech, OpenAI is moving out. OpenAI can now sell their stuff on any cloud provider they want.

2. Microsoft keeps the keys to the tech until 2032, but they don't have the exclusive rights anymore.

3. Microsoft is done giving OpenAI a cut of their sales.

4. OpenAI still has to pay Microsoft back until 2030, but we put a ceiling on it so they don't go totally broke.

5. Microsoft is still just a big shareholder hoping the stock goes up.

We’re calling this "simplifying," but really we’re just trying to build massive power plants and chips without killing each other yet. We’re still stuck together for now.

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azinman2
1 hour ago
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This was actually really helpful. I feel like it should be done for all PR speak.
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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It's better than the original, but still off.

"The Microsoft and OpenAI situation just got messy" is objectively wrong–it has been messy for months [1]. Nos. 1 through 3 are fine, though "if they can't keep up with the tech, OpenAI is moving out" parrots OpenAI's party line. No. 4 doesn't make sense–it starts out with "we" referring to OpenAI in the first person but ends by referring to them in the third person "they." No. 5 is reductive when phrased with "just."

It would seem the translator took corporate PR speak and translated it into something between the LinkedIn and short-form blogger dialects.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-and-microsoft-tensions-ar...

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Maxatar
1 hour ago
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Being objectively correct isn't the goal of the translator, the translator can't possibly know if a statement is truthful. What the translator does is well... translate, specifically from some kind of corporate speak that is really difficult for many people including myself to understand, into something more familiar.

I don't expect the translation to take OpenAI's statements and make them truthful or to investigate their veracity, but I genuinely could not understand OpenAI's press release as they have worded it. The translation at least makes it easier to understand what OpenAI's view of the situation is.

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ghostly_s
1 hour ago
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> The only only pure fuck-up I'd call out is switching from third to first person when referring to OpenAI in the same sentence (No. 4).

"We" in this sentence refers to both parties; "they" refers to OpenAI. Not a grammatical error.

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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> "We" in this sentence refers to both parties

Fair enough.

> "they" refers to OpenAI. Not a grammatical error

I'd say it is. It's a press release from OpenAI. The rest of the release uses the third-person "they" to refer to Microsoft. The LLM traded accuracy for a bad joke, which is someting I associate with LinkedIn speak.

The fundmaental problem might be the OpenAI press release is vague. (And changing. It's changed at least once since I first commented.)

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auscompgeek
1 hour ago
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In isolation sure. But in context with the other points it makes it look like "they" refers to Microsoft in all the dot points.
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MarleTangible
1 hour ago
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1f60c
1 hour ago
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Wait, I thought OpenAI had to pay Microsoft until AGI was achieved or something? Am I misremembering? Is that a different thing?
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staminade
22 minutes ago
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My understand was that was in relation to IP licensing. Microsoft got access to anything OpenAI built unless they declared they had developed AGI. This new article apparently unlinks revenue sharing from technology progress, but it's unclear to me if it changes the situation regarding IP if OpenAI (claim to) have achieved AGI.
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ksherlock
43 minutes ago
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Per WSJ, previously, they both had revenue sharing agreements. MSFT will no longer send any revenue to OpenAI. OpenAI will still send revenue to MSFT until 2030 (with new caps)
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chasd00
1 hour ago
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This gives OpenAI the ability to goto AWS instead of exclusively on Azure. I guess Azure really is hanging on by a thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616242

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xvilka
1 hour ago
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And Azure still doesn't support IPv6, looking at the GitHub[1].

[1] https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/10539

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jabl
1 hour ago
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Perhaps they should use OpenAI models to figure out how to rollout IPv6.
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WorldMaker
45 minutes ago
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I was under the impression that as long as GitHub doesn't support IPv6 it is a sign that they still haven't finished their migration to Azure. Azure supports IPv6 just fine.
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happyPersonR
50 minutes ago
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lol GitHub doesn’t run on azure at msft

They still run their own platform.

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Andrex
27 minutes ago
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Github CEO threatened the entire stack was in the process of migrating to Azure.

https://thenewstack.io/github-will-prioritize-migrating-to-a...

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awestroke
1 hour ago
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Well, you see, they just can't find a checkbox for ipv6 support in the IIS GUI on their ingress servers.
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torginus
35 minutes ago
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What? I thought Azure will always have the Sharepoint/Office/Active Directory cash cow.
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isk517
22 minutes ago
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Their engineers have been working tirelessly to make Sharepoint/Office/Active Directory as terrible as it possibly could be while still technically being functional, while continuing to raise prices on them. I've seen many small business start to chose Google Workspace over them, the cracks have formed and are large enough that they are no longer in a position were every business just go with Office because that's what everyone uses.
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Donald
1 hour ago
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Isn't this expected if OpenAI models are going to be listed on AWS GovCloud as a part of the Anthropic / Hegseth fall-out?
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sourraspberry
1 hour ago
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The disparity in coverage on this new deal is fascinating. It feels like the narrative a particular outlet is going with depends entirely on which side leaked to them first.
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concinds
1 hour ago
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Am I crazy, or was this press release fully rewritten in the past 10 minutes? The current version is around half the length of the old one, which did not frame it as a "simplification" "grounded in flexibility" but as a deeper partnership. It also had word salad about AGI, and said Azure retained exclusivity for API products but not other products, which the new statement seems to contradict.

What was I looking at?

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antonkochubey
1 hour ago
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They forgot the "hey ChatGPT, rewrite this to have better impact on the company stock" before submitting it
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einsteinx2
1 hour ago
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I noticed the exact same thing. I read the original, went back to read it again and it’s completely changed.
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freediddy
1 hour ago
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Nadella had OpenAI by the short and curlies early on. But all I've seen from him in the last couple of years is continuously acquiescing to OpenAI's demands. I wonder why he's so weak and doesn't exert more control over the situation? At one point Microsoft owned 49% of OpenAI but now it's down to 27%?
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dijit
55 minutes ago
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Everything is personal preference, and perhaps I am more fiscally conservative because I grew up in poverty.

But if I own 49% of a company and that company has more hype than product, hasn't found its market yet but is valued at trillions?

I'm going to sell percentages of that to build my war chest for things that actually hit my bottom line.

The "moonshot" has for all intents and purposes been achieved based on the valuation, and at that valuation: OpenAI has to completely crush all competition... basically just to meet its current valuations.

It would be a really fiscally irresponsible move not to hedge your bets.

Not that it matters but we did something similar with the donated bitcoin on my project. When bitcoin hit a "new record high" we sold half. Then held the remainder until it hit a "new record high" again.

Sure, we could have 'maxxed profit!'; but ultimately it did its job, it was an effective donation/investment that had reasonably maximal returns.

(that said, I do not believe in crypto as an investment opportunity, it's merely the hand I was dealt by it being donated).

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freediddy
52 minutes ago
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Microsoft didn't sell anything. OpenAI created more shares and sold those to investors, so Microsoft's stake is getting diluted.

And Microsoft only paid $10B for that stake for the most recognizable name brand for AI around the world. They don't need to "hedge their bets" it's already a humongous win.

Why let Altman continue to call the shots and decrease Microsoft's ownership stake and ability to dictate how OpenAI helps Microsoft and not the other way around?

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zozbot234
40 minutes ago
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> They don't need to "hedge their bets" it's already a humongous win.

That's a flawed argument. Why wouldn't you want to hedge a risky bet, and one that's even quite highly correlated to Microsoft's own industry sector?

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tonyedgecombe
47 minutes ago
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About the same as they wasted on Nokia.
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saaaaaam
18 minutes ago
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I don’t understand the “record high” point. How did you decide when a “record high” had been reached in a volatile market? Because at $1 the record high might be $2 until it reaches $3 a week or month later. How did you determine where to slice on “record highs”?

Genuine question because I feel like I’m maybe missing something!

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solumunus
45 minutes ago
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They haven’t sold anything they’ve been diluted.
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PunchyHamster
59 minutes ago
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Why would they acquire more when company is still not making profit ? To be left with bigger bag ?
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ZeroCool2u
2 hours ago
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Interesting side effect of this is that Google Cloud may now be the only hype scaler that can resell all 3 of the labs models? Maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but that would be a notable development, and I don't see why Google would allow Gemini to be resold through any of the other cloud providers.

Might really increase the utility of those GCP credits.

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aurareturn
2 hours ago
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Might not be good for Gemini long term if Anthropic and OpenAI can and will sell in every cloud provider they can find but businesses can only use Gemini via Google Cloud.
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jfoster
1 hour ago
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Good for Google Cloud, bad for Gemini = ??? for Google
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stavros
1 hour ago
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How is it good for Gemini that it's not available on two out of three major cloud platforms?
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aurareturn
1 hour ago
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It isn't. That's why I said "might not be good for Gemini".
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stavros
1 hour ago
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Oof, I completely missed that "not", thanks.
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retinaros
1 hour ago
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that will likely mean the end of gemini models...
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Schlagbohrer
1 hour ago
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The AGI talk is shocking but not surprising to anyone looking at how bombastic Sam Altman's public statements are.

The circular economy section really is shocking- OpenAI committing to buying $250 Billion of Azure services, while MSFT's stake is clarified as $132 Billion in OpenAI. Same circular nonsense as NVIDIA and OpenAI passing the same hundred billion back and forth.

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ModernMech
1 hour ago
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Dennis: I think we made every single one of our Paddy's Dollars back, buddy.

Mac: You're damn right. Thus creating the self-sustaining economy we've been looking for.

Dennis: That's right.

Mac: How much fresh cash did we make?

Dennis: Fresh cash! Uh, well, zero. Zero if you're talking about U.S. currency. People didn't really seem interested in spending any of that.

Mac: That's okay. So, uh, when they run out of the booze, they'll come back in and they'll have to buy more Paddy's Dollars. Keepin' it moving.

Dennis: Right. That is assuming, of course, that they will come back here and drink.

Mac: They will! They will because we'll re-distribute these to the Shanties. Thus ensuring them coming back in, keeping the money moving.

Dennis: Well, no, but if we just re-distribute these, people will continue to drink for free.

Mac: Okay...

Dennis: How does this work, Mac?

Mac: The money keeps moving in a circle.

Dennis: But we don't have any money. All we have is this. ... How does this work, dude!?

Mac: I don't know. I thought you knew.

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ksimukka
27 minutes ago
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Great scene
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helsinkiandrew
2 hours ago
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OpenAI post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921262

Tried to delete this submission in place of it but too late.

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aurareturn
2 hours ago
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  Microsoft Corp. will no longer pay revenue to OpenAI and said its partnership with the leading artificial intelligence firm will not be exclusive going forward.
What does this mean that Microsoft will no longer pay revenue to OpenAI? How did the original deal work?
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Handy-Man
2 hours ago
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They were paying them 20% of the revenue from the hosted OpenAI products I believe?
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bilbo0s
1 hour ago
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Does this mean they will host OpenAI products but not pay them? Or does it mean they are paying them in some other way?
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HarHarVeryFunny
1 hour ago
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It seems that the old deal was exclusivity to MSFT with revenue share, and now no exclusivity, no revenue share.

Bear in mind that MSFT have rights to OpenAI IP (as well as owning ~30% of them). The only reason they were giving revenue share was in return for exclusivity.

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borski
41 minutes ago
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This is a really common way to structure exclusivity; we did the same thing whenever customers requested it (and we couldn’t get rid of it entirely). Charge for the exclusivity explicitly.

If they wanted named exclusivity rather than general exclusivity, we would charge a somewhat smaller amount for each competitor they wanted exclusivity from. They could give up exclusivity at any time.

That was precisely how we structured our deal with Azure, back in 2014-2016 or so.

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deaux
58 minutes ago
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Azure was the only non-OpenAI provider that was allowed to provide OpenAI models. The comparison here is with Anthropic whose models are on both GCP and AWS (and technically also Azure though I think that might just be billing passthrough to Anthropic).
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Handy-Man
1 hour ago
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I suppose continue to host until the 2030/32 that they have access to but not share revenues when they use those models for their products like the bazillions of Copilots.
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aurareturn
2 hours ago
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The original "AGI" agreement was always a bit suspect and open to wild interpretations.

I think this is good for OpenAI. They're no longer stuck with just Microsoft. It was an advantage that Anthropic can work with anyone they like but OpenAI couldn't.

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Handy-Man
2 hours ago
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It also restricted Microsoft from "partnering" with anyone else. Wouldn't be surprised if we see another news like Amazon, Alphabet investing in Anthropic.
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aurareturn
2 hours ago
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utopiah
2 hours ago
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Also Mistral e.g. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-and-mistral...

AFAICT they are just hedging their bets left and right still. Also feels like they are winning in the sense that despite pretty much all those products being roughly equivalent... they are still running on their cloud, Azure. So even though they seem unable to capture IP anymore, they are still managing to get paid for managing the infrastructure.

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delecti
28 minutes ago
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Are they getting paid in actual money? Or are the AI companies "paying" their infrastructure bills with IOU/equity.
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philipwhiuk
1 hour ago
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Handy-Man
2 hours ago
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Yeah my bad, I was misremembering, it was about investing in others and pursuing its own "AGI" efforts. But even those conditions were updated over the last two years, hence the small investment in Anthropic last year.
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dahcryn
2 hours ago
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I think it was a lot less restrictive, as far as I understood, the only limit was Microsoft not being allowed to launch competing Microsoft-developed LLMs.
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jryio
1 hour ago
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> OpenAI has contracted to purchase an incremental $250B of Azure services, and Microsoft will no longer have a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider.

Azure is effectively OpenAI's personal compute cluster at this scale.

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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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What fraction of Azure compute does OpenAI represent? (Does the $250bn commitment have a time period? Is it legally binding?)
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runako
1 hour ago
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Azure did $75B last quarter.

That article doesn't give a timeframe, but most of these use 10 years as a placeholder. I would also imagine it's not a requirement for them to spend it evenly over the 10 years, so could be back-loaded.

OpenAI is a large customer, but this is not making Azure their personal cluster.

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einrealist
1 hour ago
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I wonder how this figure was settled. Is it based on consumer pricing? Can't Microsoft and OpenAI just make a number up, aside from a minimum to cover operating costs? When is the number just a marketing ploy to make it seem huge, important and inevitable (and too big to fail)?
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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It's unclear which elements of this new deal are binding versus promises with OpenAI characteristics. "Microsoft Corp. will publish fiscal year 2026 third-quarter financial results after the close of the market on Wednesday, April 29, 2026" [1]; I'd wait for that before jumping to conclusions.

[1] https://news.microsoft.com/source/2026/04/08/microsoft-annou...

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monkeydust
1 hour ago
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martinald
1 hour ago
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Really interesting. Why would Microsoft have done this deal? I'm a bit lost. Sure they get to not pay a revenue share _to_ OpenAI but surely that's limited to just OpenAI products which is probably a rounding error? Losing exclusivity seems like a big issue for them?
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jhk482001
41 minutes ago
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So AWS can finally use OpenAI and not only OSS version.
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chasil
1 hour ago
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Eridrus
1 hour ago
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Biggest upside of this is I expect OpenAI models to be available on Bedrock, which is huge for not having to go back to all your customers with data protection agreements.
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easton
1 hour ago
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Isn’t that an “API product”? I read this assuming the whole point of renegotiation was to let OpenAI sell raw inference via bedrock, but that still seems to be blocked except for selling to the US Government.
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fengkx
1 hour ago
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> OpenAI can now jointly develop some products with third parties. API products developed with third parties will be exclusive to Azure. Non-API products may be served on any cloud provider.

This seems impossible.

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airstrike
2 hours ago
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"Advancing Our Amazing Bet" type post
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31276
2 hours ago
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Pursue "new opportunities"? Microslop is dumping OpenAI and wishes it well in its new endeavors.
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aurareturn
1 hour ago
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I read this as the other way. OpenAI was desperate to dump Microsoft.
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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> OpenAI was desperate to dump Microsoft

Yes. Microsoft was "considering legal action against its partner OpenAI and Amazon over a $50 billion deal that could violate its exclusive cloud agreement with the ChatGPT maker" [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-weighs-legal-ac...

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iewj
1 hour ago
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In retrospect all those OAI announcements are gonna look so cringe.

They did not need to go so hard on the hype - Anthropic hasn’t in relative terms and is generating pretty comparable revenues at present.

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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> They did not need to go so hard on the hype - Anthropic hasn’t in relative terms and is generating pretty comparable revenues at present

OpenAI bet on consumers; Anthropic on enterprise. That will necessitate a louder marketing strategy for the former.

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eieiw
1 hour ago
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That’s funny.

Why is it Altman is facing kill shots and Dario isn’t?

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JumpCrisscross
1 hour ago
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> Why is it Altman is facing kill shots and Dario isn’t?

Altman peaked in the zeiteist in 2023; Dario, much less prominently, in 2024 and now '26 [1]. I'd guess around this time next year, Dario will be as hated as Altman is today.

[1] https://trends.google.com/explore?q=altman%2C%20Dario&date=t...

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m3kw9
1 hour ago
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Looks like MS is shafting OpenAI.
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TheAtomic
1 hour ago
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"We want to sell surveillance services to the US gov. MSFT was hesitant so we gave ourselves room to do it without them."
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Schlagbohrer
1 hour ago
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Extremely hard to believe that MSFT would have any hesitancy about working with the US government.
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freejazz
1 hour ago
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Impossible to take any of this seriously when it constantly refers to AGI.
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Schlagbohrer
1 hour ago
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Especially when the OpenAI definition of AGI is only in financial terms (when it becomes profitable), which can be easily manipulated.
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aliljet
2 hours ago
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Why is this being made public?
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brookst
2 hours ago
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It’s an agreement between a public company and a highly scrutinized private company. Several of the provisions will change what happens in the marketplace, which everyone will see.

I imagine the thinking was that it’s better to just post it clearly than to have rumors and leaks and speculations that could hurt both companies (“should I risk using GCP for OpenAI models when it’s obviously against the MS / OpenAI agreement?”).

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Schlagbohrer
1 hour ago
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Also it's about OpenAI going public.
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