Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, right, speaks as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on during the OpenAI DevDay event in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2023.
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Microsoft‘s massive investment in OpenAI is weighing on earnings.
Following Microsoft’s quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, CFO Amy Hood said she expects the company to take a $1.5 billion hit to income in the current period, mainly because of an expected loss from OpenAI.
Microsoft has invested close to $14 billion in OpenAI, whose ChatGPT assistant has gone viral and inspired a whole new industry called generative artificial intelligence. The trend has generated billions of dollars in new revenue for Microsoft.
But OpenAI is losing bundles of cash. The company expects $5 billion in losses this year, before stock-based compensation, on $4 billion in revenue, The Information reported earlier this month, citing documents.
Hood said that for Microsoft, the loss is accounted for under the equity method. The accounting approach refers to a company’s share of the invested company’s profit or loss in a given period, a Microsoft spokesperson said.
The additional detail is “not due to a change in our partnership or investment in OpenAI,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Our partnership with OpenAI continues to deliver results, as we build differentiated IP and drive revenue momentum.”
The earnings call came after Microsoft reported an earnings and revenue beat for the fiscal first quarter. However, the stock slid in extended trading after the company’s forecast called for slower-than-expected growth.
While OpenAI is a central part of Microsoft’s growth strategy, the company has been hedging its bets after integrating OpenAI’s models into several products and acting as the startup’s exclusive cloud infrastructure provider. On Tuesday, Microsoft’s GitHub subsidiary said it would allow developers to power the Copilot Chat feature with models from Google or startup Anthropic instead of OpenAI’s GPT-4o.
In addition to the $13 billion Microsoft had invested in OpenAI as of Sept. 30, the company put in another $750 million in a funding round announced in October, which valued OpenAI at $157 billion.
Microsoft rivals are playing a similar game. Amazon, most notably, has invested $4 billion in AI model company Anthropic, whose founders previously worked at OpenAI. Amazon reports earnings on Thursday.
The OpenAI investment disclosure was new for Microsoft, but the company has registered over $2.3 billion in other expense in the past four quarters. That number has factored in the investment in OpenAI, the spokesperson said.
On the earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the collaboration with OpenAI has benefited both parties and that the company feels good about “our investment stake in OpenAI.”
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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