Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, that the company intends to fully capitalize on its revised partnership with OpenAI, which gives Microsoft royalty-free access to OpenAI’s most advanced AI models and intellectual property through 2032.
Speaking during Microsoft’s earnings call in response to a Wall Street analyst’s question about the deal’s financial impact, Nadella was direct: “We have a frontier model, with all the IP rights that we will have access to all the way to ’32 and we fully plan to exploit it.”
Under the restructured agreement, Microsoft retains access to OpenAI’s models and agent products — including IP rights — without having to pay for them. The previous deal required Microsoft to pay OpenAI for that access. Microsoft can now offer OpenAI’s technology to its cloud customers under these new terms.
The revised deal also removed Microsoft’s exclusive access to OpenAI’s technology. OpenAI subsequently announced exclusive AI products with Amazon, Microsoft’s largest cloud rival, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AWS CEO Mark Garman publicly discussing their collaboration. Nadella downplayed concerns that this shift would erode Microsoft’s competitive position in AI.
Microsoft reported that its AI business has surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% year-over-year — figures covering the last full quarter under the previous agreement. Nadella also noted that OpenAI remains a significant Microsoft customer, with commitments to purchase more than $250 billion worth of Microsoft cloud services. Microsoft also holds a 27% equity stake in OpenAI.
Nadella further argued that enterprise customers increasingly want access to multiple AI models rather than a single provider. “We offer the broadest selection of models of any hyperscaler,” he said, noting that over 10,000 customers have used more than one model across OpenAI, Anthropic, open source, and others.
Source: TechCrunch