Internal Microsoft emails presented in federal court in May 2026 reveal that company executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, were skeptical of OpenAI as far back as 2017 and 2018 — years before the two organizations cemented what became one of tech’s most prominent corporate partnerships.
The emails surfaced during the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial, where Elon Musk’s attorneys introduced them to document Microsoft’s evolving relationship with OpenAI. The correspondence, involving more than a dozen Microsoft executives, shows the company weighing whether to provide OpenAI with hundreds of millions of dollars in cloud computing services at a time when the lab was still a small nonprofit focused on AI research.
The email chain began on August 11, 2017, when Nadella congratulated OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after the lab’s AI won a video game competition. Ten days later, Altman responded requesting $300 million worth of Microsoft Azure cloud services. Nadella then asked four lieutenants for their assessment. The responses were largely unenthusiastic: Microsoft’s AI team saw “no value in engaging,” its research team believed its own work was “more advanced,” and its PR team objected to supporting a group promoting the idea of “machines beating humans.”
Jason Zander, Microsoft’s executive vice president, estimated the company stood to lose around $150 million over several years if it met Altman’s request. He suggested Microsoft would need to see a clearer business benefit before committing. A separate email from early 2018 indicated Microsoft planned to stop offering OpenAI discounts after that March.
Despite the internal reservations, one factor kept Microsoft engaged: concern that refusing could push OpenAI toward Amazon, the dominant cloud provider at the time. Roughly 18 months after the emails were sent, Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI after the lab established a for-profit arm that gave Microsoft the potential to earn a return of up to $20 billion. Microsoft declined to comment on the emails.
Source: WIRED