Leaks Reveal OpenAI Is Loosing Money Paying Microsoft

The latest leak from tech blogger Ed Zitron reveals that OpenAI handed Microsoft nearly $866 million in revenue‑share payments during the first three quarters of 2024, up from $494 million a year earlier. Those figures reflect the 20 % share Microsoft secured after its $13 billion total investment, including the headline‑making $10 billion infusion. By extrapolating the share, analysts estimate OpenAI’s total revenue topped $4 billion this year, with a projected annualized run‑rate that CEO Sam Altman claims will exceed $20 billion by year‑end.

Beyond the headline payments, the documents expose a staggering rise in compute expenses. Inference costs—cash outlays for serving real‑time model requests—jumped from roughly $3.8 billion in 2023 to $8.65 billion in the first nine months of 2024. Training spend, while larger in absolute terms, is largely offset by Microsoft Azure credits granted as part of the partnership, meaning much of the training budget is non‑cash. Nevertheless, OpenAI is diversifying its cloud footprint, signing multi‑year deals with CoreWeave, Oracle, AWS, and Google Cloud to hedge against a single‑provider risk.

These financial dynamics fuel the broader debate over an AI valuation bubble. If OpenAI’s flagship models are still operating at a loss despite soaring revenues, investors may need to reassess the sustainability of multi‑billion‑dollar AI bets. The opaque nature of Microsoft’s own Azure‑OpenAI revenue reporting adds another layer of uncertainty ahead of any potential OpenAI IPO. Stakeholders will watch closely how the company balances rapid growth, compute cost inflation, and profitability pressures as the market matures.