Microsoft Took $10 Billion From OpenAI Last Quarter — Nearly 11% of Its Revenue

October 29 — In a regulatory filing submitted on Wednesday local time, Microsoft said that in the quarter ended 30 September it took in $10 billion (about 66.8 billion yuan) from its commercial partnership with OpenAI, including revenue-sharing payments. That amounts to nearly 11% of Microsoft’s $92.3 billion (about 616.6 billion yuan) in total revenue for the quarter, underlining how deeply the two companies are financially bound even as they increasingly compete for the same customers.

For the whole of fiscal 2026, Microsoft’s revenue from OpenAI-related business was $24.1 billion (about 161 billion yuan). At the pace of the latest quarter, Microsoft would take in about $40 billion (about 267.2 billion yuan) a year from the OpenAI relationship.

Microsoft also disclosed that, as of the end of September, OpenAI owed it $7.2 billion (about 48.1 billion yuan) in accounts receivable, up from $6 billion (about 40.1 billion yuan) at the end of June. That money is owed from earlier transactions and is not new revenue.

It is not yet clear how much of Microsoft’s OpenAI revenue comes from revenue sharing and how much from Azure cloud services. In November 2025, TechCrunch cited leaked documents reporting that Microsoft’s net revenue share from OpenAI in the first nine months of 2025 was $865.8 million (about 5.78 billion yuan).

Reports say that under earlier agreements OpenAI had to give Microsoft 20% of its revenue as part of Microsoft’s more than $13 billion (about 86.8 billion yuan) investment in the AI startup — a share neither company has publicly confirmed. Under a new agreement reached in April 2026, OpenAI must keep sharing revenue with Microsoft within a cap until 2030, even if it is allowed to work with other cloud providers.

The two companies began loosening their formerly exclusive relationship in October 2025, when Microsoft relaxed restrictions on OpenAI, giving the startup more room to work with other cloud providers. In exchange, under the October 2025 agreement, OpenAI committed to buying another $250 billion (about 1.67 trillion yuan) of Azure services.

Microsoft’s stake in OpenAI has also slipped slightly, from about 25% in June to 24% in September. That continues a gradual dilution since the October 2025 recapitalisation, when Microsoft held about 27%. Microsoft did not explain the reason for the dilution.