Microsoft
OpenAI's largest backer and exclusive-ish cloud, now diversifying compute and models
Microsoft has committed roughly $13B+ to OpenAI and hosts most of its training/inference on Azure, though a late-2025 restructuring of OpenAI into a PBC loosened Azure exclusivity (OpenAI added Oracle, CoreWeave, and Google Cloud capacity). Microsoft is simultaneously one of the largest Nvidia GPU buyers and is building its own Maia accelerators to reduce dependence. Its capex guidance blew past $80B/year in FY2025 driven almost entirely by AI datacenters.
OpenAI investment
~$13B+ committed
FY2025 capex
>$80B, AI-driven
Own silicon
Azure Maia 100
How it fits the stack
Microsoft with what it depends on (above) and what it feeds (below). The figure renders as a crawlable diagram and upgrades to an interactive 3D graph as it scrolls into view.
Microsoft in the AI stack. Microsoft with its immediate upstream dependencies (top) and downstream dependents (bottom) in the AI value chain. Hover a node in 3D, or read the full relationships below.
Graph data (text) — 7 entities, 6 relationships
- Microsoft —depends on→ Nvidia
- CoreWeave (financing) —supplies→ Microsoft
- GitHub Copilot —hosts→ Microsoft
- Microsoft —partners with→ Constellation Energy
- Microsoft —partners with→ OpenAI PBC restructuring
- Microsoft —invests in→ OpenAI
Context — capital, rivals, policy · · 4