Bloomberg Reports OpenAI Drove Most Microsoft AI Revenue
Microsoft recorded $24.1 billion in sales from OpenAI during the year ended in June, Bloomberg reports, accounting for most of the company's artificial intelligence revenue under new disclosures. Bloomberg also reports that CEO Satya Nadella had cited a $37 billion annual AI revenue run rate at the end of the March quarter, while Microsoft did not update that total in its latest earnings release.
Microsoft recorded $24.1 billion in sales from OpenAI during the year ended in June, an amount that represented most of its artificial intelligence revenue, according to a company filing reported by Bloomberg.
The disclosure provides an unusually specific view into the commercial relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said at the end of the March quarter that the company was on pace for $37 billion in AI revenue over a full year.
Microsoft did not update that total AI-sales figure when it released fiscal fourth-quarter results on July 29. The company's official release reported $331.8 billion in total fiscal-year revenue and detailed the accounting impact of its OpenAI investment, but it did not state the $24.1 billion OpenAI-sales figure cited by Bloomberg.
The $24.1 billion figure covers the year ended in June, whereas Nadella's $37 billion figure was an annualized run-rate statement made at the end of March, so the two figures should not be treated as a like-for-like measure of OpenAI's share of the later annual total.
Why the disclosure matters
The reported revenue concentration matters because AI revenue can reflect both broad enterprise adoption and spending by a small number of compute-intensive customers. In comparable infrastructure markets, a large customer's training and inference workloads can materially affect reported AI revenue, capacity planning, and investors' assessment of demand durability.
For data and ML teams, the disclosure adds evidence that an AI developer can be a major source of a company's AI revenue. Public reporting cited in the available material does not provide a breakdown of the $24.1 billion by service, workload type, or OpenAI product.
Key Points
- 1Bloomberg reports Microsoft recorded $24.1 billion in OpenAI sales, making the AI developer the principal source of the company's AI revenue.
- 2Nadella's previously cited $37 billion annualized AI run rate and the June-year-end figure cover different periods, limiting direct share comparisons.
- 3Microsoft's July 29 earnings release reports total fiscal-year results and OpenAI investment effects but does not state the $24.1 billion sales figure.
Scoring Rationale
The disclosure offers a material data point on AI revenue concentration and the scale of Microsoft and OpenAI's commercial relationship. It is particularly relevant to readers monitoring AI revenue concentration and the commercial relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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