Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella faced pushback even from the company’s cofounder and original CEO Bill Gates, he recalled during an interview on tech-focused YouTube channel TPBN. “Remember this was a nonprofit, and I think Bill [Gates] even said, ‘Yeah, you’re going to burn this billion dollars,'” Nadella said.

Microsoft and OpenAI unveil a deal extending IP rights, adding independent AGI verification, and giving both sides more freedom while maintaining Azure ties.

Microsoft made its first investment in Sam Altman's OpenAI in 2019. It now holds a 27% in OpenAI's for-profit business.

Microsoft and OpenAI announced the long-awaited details of their new partnership agreement Tuesday morning — with concessions on both sides that keep the companies aligned but not in lockstep as they move into their next phases of AI development.

The new agreement maintains Microsoft as OpenAI’s frontier model partner and preserves Microsoft’s exclusive rights to OpenAI’s IP and Azure API exclusivity until the threshold of AGI is reached. Under a previous arrangement,

In the new agreement, Microsoft gets a 27% stake in OpenAI's for-profit business, the OpenAI Group PBC, worth around $135 billion.

The nonprofit arm, now called the OpenAI Foundation, will have a $130 billion stake in the for-profit enterprise.

Under the new pact, Microsoft will get a 27% ownership stake in OpenAI worth about $135 billion, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. In addition, Microsoft will have access to the artificial intelligence startup’s technology until 2032, including models that achieved the benchmark of AI general intelligence.

On October 29, 2025, Microsoft reported strong fiscal first quarter results, highlighted by robust Azure and cloud growth, a restructured partnership with OpenAI valued at US$135 billion, and plans to double its data center footprint over the next two years to meet rising AI demand.