“The number that really stuck with me was $10 billion in quarterly revenue from OpenAI. This includes revenue-sharing payments from OpenAI as well as other business between the companies, such as OpenAI's use of Azure to train and run its models. The notable thing there is that's like twice as much as Microsoft makes on Xbox in revenue.”
GeekWire · October 2026
Context
Todd was going through Microsoft's quarterly earnings, where Azure grew 48%. He highlights how much Microsoft still earns from OpenAI even as the partnership has become less exclusive.
Transcript
So Azure was up significantly. And one of the interesting things is Microsoft has started reporting actual revenue for Azure, the cloud business. In the past, they would just give you a quarterly growth rate. Because it's doing well. That's right. And it's also researched. Didn't they cut
back on disclosing something related to co-pilot? Did you see that news? Yes,
they did not say how many co-pilot seats they have as a number that you could compare against total Microsoft 365 seats. Which they used to do. They've done it periodically, selectively. And they only do it when it reinforces a really positive narrative. So that tells you something when they don't give you the number. But yeah, Azure brought in 33.2 billion in the quarter, up 48% from a year earlier. So huge growth in their cloud business. But the number that really stuck with me was $10 billion in quarterly revenue from OpenAI. So this includes revenue sharing payments from OpenAI as well as other business between the companies, such as OpenAI's use of Azure to train and run its AI models. So here you have OpenAI independent of Microsoft selling OpenAI to its customers, independent of that. Microsoft is making $10 billion in the quarter from just doing business with OpenAI. And the notable thing there was that's like twice as much as Microsoft makes on Xbox in revenue.
Wow.
Isn't that crazy?
Well, I guess that investment that Microsoft made is paid off.
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