Microsoft's $13B OpenAI partnership (2023)
Microsoft invested roughly $13 billion in OpenAI, securing preferred access to its frontier models and making Azure the exclusive cloud provider. Sam Altman's brief ouster in November 2023 showed how exposed Microsoft was to a partner it didn't control.
Microsoft integrated GPT models across Office, Bing, and Azure, cementing OpenAI as the default enterprise AI provider.
The episode pushed large enterprises to hedge their AI dependence, accelerating interest in open-weight models and multi-provider strategies.
Thomson Reuters is acting on the same lesson Microsoft learned: renting frontier AI from a partner means surrendering control over cost, governance, and roadmap.
