{"id":292247,"date":"2025-11-15T01:31:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T01:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/292247\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T01:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T01:31:06","slug":"leaked-documents-shed-light-into-how-much-openai-pays-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/292247\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaked documents shed light into how much OpenAI pays Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a year of frenzied dealmaking and rumors of an upcoming IPO<\/a>, the financial scrutiny into OpenAI is intensifying. Leaked documents obtained by tech blogger Ed Zitron provide more of a glimpse into OpenAI\u2019s financials \u2014 specifically its revenue and compute costs over the past couple of years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zitron reported<\/a> this week that in 2024, Microsoft received $493.8 million in revenue share payments from OpenAI. In the first three quarters of 2025, that number jumped to $865.8 million, according to documents he viewed.<\/p>\n

OpenAI reportedly<\/a> shares 20% of its revenue with Microsoft as part of a previous deal where the software giant invested over $13 billion in the powerful AI startup. (Neither the startup nor the people in Redmond have publicly confirmed this percentage.)<\/p>\n

However, this is where things get a little sticky, because Microsoft also shares revenue with OpenAI, kicking back about 20% of the revenues from Bing and Azure OpenAI Service, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Bing is powered by OpenAI, and the OpenAI Service sells cloud access to OpenAI\u2019s models to developers and businesses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The source also told TechCrunch that the leaked payments refer to Microsoft\u2019s net revenue share, not the gross revenue share. In other words, they don\u2019t include whatever Microsoft paid to OpenAI from Bing and Azure OpenAI royalties. Microsoft deducts those figures from its internally reported revenue share numbers, according to this person.<\/p>\n

Microsoft doesn\u2019t break out how much it makes from Bing and Azure OpenAI in its financial statements, so it\u2019s difficult to estimate how much the tech giant is kicking back.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the leaked documents provide a window into the hottest company on the private markets today \u2014 and not just how much it makes in revenue, but also how much it\u2019s spending in comparison to that revenue.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

So, based on that widely reported 20% revenue-share statistic, we can infer that OpenAI\u2019s revenue was at least $2.5 billion in 2024 and $4.33 billion in the first three quarters of 2025 \u2014 but very likely to be more. Previous reports from The Information put OpenAI\u2019s 2024 revenue<\/a> at around $4 billion, and its revenue from the first half of 2025 at $4.3 billion<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Altman also recently said OpenAI\u2019s revenue is \u201cwell more\u201d than reports of $13 billion a year<\/a>, will end the year above $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate<\/a> (which is a projection, not guidance on actual revenue), and that the company could even hit $100 billion by 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Per Zitron\u2019s analysis, OpenAI may have spent roughly $3.8 billion on inference in 2024. That spend increased to roughly $8.65 billion in the first nine months of 2025. Inference is the compute used to run a trained AI model to generate responses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

OpenAI has historically almost exclusively relied on Microsoft Azure to provide compute access, though it has also struck deals with CoreWeave and Oracle, and more recently with AWS and Google Cloud.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Previous reports put OpenAI\u2019s entire compute spend at roughly $5.6 billion for 2024<\/a> and its \u201ccost of revenue\u201d at $2.5 billion for the first half of 2025<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that while OpenAI\u2019s training spend is mostly non-cash \u2014 meaning, paid by credits Microsoft awarded OpenAI as part of its investment \u2014 the firm\u2019s inference spend is largely cash. (Training refers to the compute resources needed to initially train a model.)<\/p>\n

While not a complete picture, these numbers imply that OpenAI could be spending\u00a0more on inference costs than it is earning in revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And those implications promise to add to the incessant AI bubble chatter that has seeped into every conversation from New York City to Silicon Valley. If model giant OpenAI really still is in the red running its models, what might this mean for the massive investments at jaw-dropping valuations for the rest of the AI world?<\/p>\n

OpenAI declined to comment. Microsoft did not respond to TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? We\u2019re reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry \u2014 from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Reach out to Rebecca Bellan at\u00a0rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com<\/a>\u00a0or Russell Brandom at\u00a0russell.brandom@techcrunch.com<\/a>. For secure communication, you can contact them via Signal at\u00a0@rebeccabellan.491\u00a0and russellbrandom.49.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a year of frenzied dealmaking and rumors of an upcoming IPO, the financial scrutiny into OpenAI is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,1281,1283,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-292247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-microsoft","12":"tag-openai","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}