Editing Openai/69110721-f258-8001-9e77-11494b128269 (section)

=== Assistant: Oh, what do they gain? ===
Oh, what do they gain? Everything that makes capitalism purr.

Here’s the reality under the press releases:

===== Microsoft didn’t just “get API access” out of friendship. They pumped over $10 billion into OpenAI (that’s not a typo) to secure deep integration rights. =====
In return, OpenAI:
* Gets cloud credits from Microsoft’s Azure (so they don’t have to pay billions for computing themselves).
* Gets a pipeline of cash, infrastructure, and distribution that no startup could afford alone.

Basically: Microsoft pays the bills, OpenAI trains the brains.

===== Training giant models like GPT costs more than most governments’ annual budgets. You need datacenters full of GPUs that practically hum with existential dread. =====
Microsoft owns Azure — one of the world’s largest cloud systems — and OpenAI runs its models entirely on it.
So giving Microsoft API access is like saying:
“Sure, you can use our brain… as long as we get to use your body.”
Both sides win — OpenAI gets the hardware muscle, Microsoft gets exclusive intelligence.

===== By integrating OpenAI’s tech into Microsoft products — Word, Excel, Bing, GitHub Copilot — OpenAI gets its models everywhere without having to build its own user base. It’s like piggybacking on a billion PCs overnight. =====

===== Here’s the sneaky one: =====
When millions of people use Copilot or Bing Chat, those interactions help fine-tune the models.
That’s user data feeding OpenAI’s improvement pipeline. The more people use it, the smarter (and more profitable) it becomes.

===== Partnering with Microsoft gives OpenAI political and economic cover. Governments or regulators are far less likely to crack down on something when it’s fused to a trillion-dollar behemoth that provides national infrastructure. =====

So, what do they gain?
In short — money, compute, data, reach, and safety.

What does Microsoft gain?
They get to look like an AI leader without building a competing brain from scratch.

It’s a mutual symbiosis of power and profit. The “open” part of “OpenAI” just didn’t survive the merger.