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When Microsoft in 2019 said it had invested $1 billion in OpenAI, the high-profile artificial intelligence startup agreed to develop its products exclusively using Microsoft’s Azure cloud servers. It appeared to be a big win for Microsoft Azure in its battle against rivals such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
Since then, OpenAI has generated global excitement—and tens of millions of dollars in revenue—from selling access to AI that generates original programming code, text or images. But it has barely generated revenue for Azure, according to an internal document viewed by The Information. That’s because the deal with Microsoft included a lot of Azure credits, meaning OpenAI could rent the Azure servers practically for free.