Alex Dudov
● Microsoft just closed a major deal with OpenAI, picking up a 27% stake in the AI company now valued at $135 billion. This makes Microsoft OpenAI's biggest strategic investor and ties their AI systems even closer to Azure.
● Here's where it gets interesting: OpenAI committed to spending $250 billion on Azure cloud services. That's a huge bet, making Microsoft the backbone of OpenAI's infrastructure for training models and running operations worldwide. These two companies are now deeply interconnected.
● But there's a catch. Microsoft won't get full intellectual property rights to OpenAI's tech until they hit AGI—artificial general intelligence. That's the point where AI can do any cognitive task a human can. It's still theoretical, and nobody knows when (or if) it'll happen. So Microsoft's full control over OpenAI's core assets hangs on a breakthrough that's still out of reach.
● For Microsoft's bottom line, this is a mixed bag. The Azure deal guarantees steady income for decades, which is great. But without immediate IP ownership, they're still licensing OpenAI's tech, which limits how much profit they can squeeze out short-term. Still, the move positions Microsoft ahead of rivals like Google, Amazon, and Anthropic in both AI infrastructure and enterprise adoption.
Alex Dudov
