Microsoft books $10 billion from OpenAI in one quarter, 11% of revenue

Microsoft booked $10 billion in revenue from commercial arrangements with OpenAI in the quarter ended September 30, the company said in its quarterly filing on Wednesday. The figure includes revenue-sharing payments. It equals nearly 11% of Microsoft’s $92.3 billion in quarterly revenue.¹

The pace is new. Microsoft recorded $24.1 billion from OpenAI across the fiscal year that ended in June, or about $6 billion a quarter on average.² The latest quarter is roughly two-thirds higher than that average. Held for a full year, it would come to about $40 billion.¹

The filing is where this number comes from because OpenAI counts as a related party. Microsoft’s stake of about 24% triggers accounting rules that require it to report business between the two. The July annual report gave a full-year total; this is the first quarterly figure.²

What we know / What we do not

We know the total. We do not know the split. Microsoft did not say how much came from revenue-sharing payments and how much from other business, such as OpenAI running and training its models on Azure.² It also did not say how much of Azure’s 48% growth to $33.2 billion came from OpenAI.² Our earlier report covers the Azure figure on its own.

One leaked-document report from November 2025 put net revenue-sharing payments at $865.8 million for the first nine months of that year.¹ That is one outlet’s account and covers a different period, so it cannot be used to back out a split now.

Receivables tell a similar story. Microsoft was owed $7.2 billion by OpenAI at the end of September, up from $6 billion at the end of June. That is money owed for past transactions, not extra revenue.¹

The contract terms point the same direction. OpenAI reportedly shares 20% of its revenue with Microsoft, though neither company has confirmed the percentage. Under an April 2026 agreement, the sharing continues through 2030, subject to a cap.¹ OpenAI also committed in October 2025 to buy an additional $250 billion in Azure services.¹³

The tie has loosened in other ways. Microsoft’s ownership stake fell from about 25% in June to 24% in September, and from roughly 27% after the October 2025 recapitalization. Microsoft did not specify what caused the dilution.¹³ OpenAI may now use competing cloud providers.¹

On the earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella was asked about OpenAI’s share of revenue. He did not address the number, and said customers increasingly mix models from different companies.² Microsoft also builds its own models and offers Anthropic’s.²

A sense of scale: the $10 billion is larger than Xbox at $5.4 billion, and search and advertising at $6.6 billion, in the same quarter.²

One caution on the concentration story. An earlier estimate that OpenAI makes up roughly 70% of Microsoft’s AI business rests on an assumed growth rate, not a disclosed number. Against total revenue, the share is far smaller.⁴

Our read: The numbers say the two companies are less exclusive and more entangled in dollar terms at the same time. The contracts allow more freedom, yet the cash flowing between them just grew by two-thirds. Until Microsoft breaks out the parts, the open question is how much of that $10 billion is revenue sharing and how much is OpenAI’s own computing bill. The next quarterly filing will show whether the pace holds.

Footnotes

1. TechCrunch, “Microsoft recorded $10 billion in revenue from OpenAI”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. GeekWire, “Bigger than Bing or Xbox: Microsoft’s OpenAI haul reaches $10B in quarterly revenue”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. The Verge, “OpenAI completed its for-profit restructuring — and struck a new deal with Microsoft”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩²

4. The Next Web, “Microsoft’s AI business is booming. A filing shows most of it is just OpenAI”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩