OpenAI plans to cap revenue-sharing payments to Microsoft at $38 billion, according to a report from The Information relayed by Reuters. The ceiling would replace the open-ended revenue share that has governed the two companies' commercial relationship since Microsoft's earliest investments in OpenAI. It is the latest and most concrete number to surface from the months-long renegotiation of a partnership that has defined the commercial AI era.
The mechanics matter. Under the current arrangement, a percentage of OpenAI's revenue flows back to Microsoft alongside Azure compute commitments, with no stated upper bound. A $38 billion cap converts that uncapped claim into a finite one, after which OpenAI keeps the full top line. For a company whose annualized revenue has been climbing into the double-digit billions, the ceiling is approachable rather than theoretical.
Microsoft has invested roughly $13 billion in OpenAI across multiple tranches since 2019, with the bulk of that capital deployed as Azure credits rather than cash. The revenue-share mechanism was the return leg of that deal: Microsoft fronted compute and capital, OpenAI sent back a slice of what it earned. A $38 billion cap implies a defined payback envelope rather than a perpetual royalty.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI plans to cap revenue-sharing payments to Microsoft at $38 billion, per The Information.
- 02The cap would replace an open-ended revenue share that has run since Microsoft's first OpenAI investment.
- 03The change is part of the broader restructuring of the OpenAI–Microsoft commercial relationship.
The report does not specify the timeline over which the cap applies, the rate at which payments accrue toward it, or what happens to Microsoft's other contractual rights once the ceiling is reached. Those details will determine whether $38 billion is a near-term constraint or a distant marker. OpenAI and Microsoft have not publicly confirmed the figure.
“A $38 billion ceiling reframes a deal that has so far funneled an uncapped slice of OpenAI's revenue back to its largest infrastructure partner.”— Jaeden Schafer
The renegotiation has been running in parallel with OpenAI's broader corporate restructuring, including its move toward a public-benefit corporate structure and the unwinding of certain exclusivity provisions in its Microsoft contract. Earlier reporting has described Microsoft losing its right of first refusal on OpenAI's compute purchases, freeing OpenAI to sign large deals with other infrastructure providers. The revenue cap fits the same pattern: trading open-ended claims for bounded ones.
OpenAI has been signing those alternative deals at pace. The company committed to a multi-year Oracle cloud arrangement and has been a central counterparty in Nvidia's $40 billion of AI equity commitments in early 2026, of which a $30 billion OpenAI bet was the centerpiece. Each non-Microsoft deal reduces the share of OpenAI's compute that flows through Azure — and, by extension, the strategic value to Microsoft of the original revenue-share construct.
For Microsoft, the cap arrives against a backdrop of accelerating AI revenue inside its own product stack. Copilot, Azure OpenAI Service, and the GitHub Copilot family have become material contributors to Microsoft's commercial cloud growth. A defined OpenAI payback envelope arguably matters less to Redmond now than it would have in 2023, when OpenAI's models were the only credible frontier option on Azure.
OpenAI's incentive runs the other way. Capping the Microsoft outflow at $38 billion preserves more upside for OpenAI's other shareholders as the company moves toward a structure that can raise from a wider pool of investors. It also simplifies the story OpenAI tells when negotiating with new compute partners and enterprise customers who do not want Microsoft sitting in the middle of every transaction.
Skepticism is warranted on the specifics. The $38 billion figure comes via a single secondary report and has not been confirmed by either company, and the underlying contracts between OpenAI and Microsoft are not public. Past reporting on the partnership's terms has been revised more than once as actual filings emerged. Until either side files or publishes the restructured agreement, the cap should be treated as the best current signal of where the negotiation is landing, not the final number.
The shift in framing is the more durable story. The OpenAI–Microsoft relationship is moving from an entangled, uncapped partnership toward a defined commercial deal with stated limits — the kind of arrangement that can be audited, renegotiated, and eventually exited. For the AI market, that means OpenAI is positioning itself to operate as an independent platform with multiple infrastructure partners, and Microsoft is positioning itself to compete as one buyer of frontier models among several. A $38 billion ceiling is the price tag on that transition.
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