The Breakup of Microsoft and OpenAI #pm #strategist #marketer
The Breakup of Microsoft and OpenAI #pm #strategist #marketer
OpenAI vs. Microsoft: Sharing a bed but dreaming different dreams (The real story behind the AI War) "Your AI runs on my land." Microsoft's chilling warning. Will OpenAI betray them? OpenAI vs. MS: Enemies in disguise? Microsoft and OpenAI, who everyone thought were on the same team,
The relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI, who everyone believed were a single team, is looking uneasy. They formed an alliance for the grand future of AI, but now they've begun to draw swords on each other. "No matter how smart an AI you create, the electricity and servers to run it are in my hands." Microsoft's quiet warning. And OpenAI's dangerous tightrope walk as it dreams of independence. If you don't understand the true meaning hidden behind this power struggle between two giants, you'll be the only one left behind in the coming AI war. Today, we'll uncover everything about the changes in their relationship and future scenarios that no one has told you.
#Microsoft #OpenAI #MS #AIWar #ITtrends #BigTech #SamAltman #SatyaNadella
"Your AI runs on my land." 🤯 The truth is, they were backstabbing each other. The real inside story of the AI War... chilling.
#AI #MS #OpenAI #ITgossip #Shorts MS: "Don't forget, your AI runs on my land (servers)." OpenAI: "Screw this, I'm buying my own land!" This war of nerves between them, who will win in the end?
Right now in the AI industry, things may seem calm on the surface, but a massive tectonic shift is happening underneath. Microsoft and OpenAI, who everyone believed were one team, a community of fate. A very clear crack has begun to appear in their seemingly perfect relationship.
Microsoft is OpenAI's largest investor, having invested about $13 billion. While this seems like a huge win, its recent corporate value has seemed sluggish compared to other companies. The reason might just be OpenAI.
This isn't just a power struggle between two companies. It's the prelude to the greatest war of all, where money, power, technology, and infrastructure collide over the future of humanity: AI. It's the dangerous cohabitation of two giants over the hegemony of the 21st century's most important technology. Today, we're going to lay bare the real inside story that no one has told you—from the beginning of their history to the current conflict and the future scenarios that will unfold.
(Part 1: The Honeymoon Begins - The $13 Billion Alliance That Changed the World) This whole story goes back to 2019.
At the time, OpenAI had a grand dream of creating artificial intelligence beneficial to humanity, but it was practically a poor non-profit without the money and computing power to realize that dream. The cost of electricity and servers to train a large language model just once was, quite literally, astronomical. Their ideals were high, but reality was cold.
It was then that Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, appeared like a savior. From 2019 to now, he has poured a staggering $13 billion, over 17 trillion Korean won, into OpenAI. The IT giant made an unprecedented bet in history, staking its own fate on an unknown startup that no one was paying attention to.
Why did Microsoft make such a huge gamble?
At the time, MS was suffering from a severe sense of crisis, feeling that it was falling behind Amazon in the cloud market and Google in AI technology. The era of Windows and Office was fading, and they desperately needed a new growth engine. They needed a game-changer to flip the script.
Satya Nadella saw that potential in the technology of Sam Altman and his team at OpenAI. So he made a bold decision. MS would exclusively provide money and its vast cloud service, Azure, and in return, it would receive a 49% stake in OpenAI's for-profit entity and the exclusive right to integrate their AI technology into its own products at will. It was, in effect, like buying OpenAI's heart.
For OpenAI, this was an offer they couldn't refuse. Thanks to MS, they could stop worrying about money and focus solely on their research: developing AGI for the good of humanity. And so began the seemingly perfect alliance between the realist MS with its vast capital and the tech idealist OpenAI with its grand vision. And this alliance, as we all know, forever changed the world with the creation of 'ChatGPT'.
(Part 2: The Beginning of the Crack - Money, Power, and Betrayal) But no alliance is eternal. As ChatGPT's success transformed OpenAI from a mere research lab into a corporate giant worth tens of billions of dollars, the two giants' dreams began to diverge. They slowly turned from partners into competitors.
The first crack to surface was the acquisition bid for Windswept.
When OpenAI tried to acquire the AI coding startup Windswept for 3 trillion won, MS put on the brakes. "Hold on. According to our contract, we should have access to all the tech IP you acquire. That company's technology should naturally be integrated into our MS GitHub Copilot." But Sam Altman refused. "No. This is a unique asset that OpenAI is acquiring independently. We can't give it to you." This power struggle eventually caused the deal to fall through, and Windswept disintegrated into thin air. MS was furious that the child they had raised was no longer listening, and OpenAI felt a sense of crisis, fearing MS was trying to swallow them whole. It was the first time their true intentions clashed head-on.
This incident taught OpenAI a harsh lesson: "If we rely too much on MS, we could lose everything." From then on, OpenAI started cheating. Breaking their past promise to use only MS Azure, they signed a multi-hundred-billion-won deal with Oracle, MS's biggest cloud competitor. They even started pursuing a massive 100-trillion-won data center project called Stargate in partnership with SoftBank. This was a de facto declaration of independence, saying, "We won't just be a tenant on your land anymore. We will build our own."
Microsoft didn't just stand by. Engulfed in a sense of betrayal, they immediately launched a counter-offensive. They invested $4 billion, about 5 trillion won, in Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest rival, becoming its second-largest shareholder. And they began to integrate not only OpenAI's GPT models but also Anthropic's Claude models into their core AI assistant, Copilot, giving users a choice. This was a chillingly clear warning to OpenAI. "Even without you, there are plenty of other smart AIs to replace you. If you mess with us, we can build up your competitor and kill you."
(Part 3: The Present and Future - The Two Giants' Dangerous Cohabitation) Currently, the relationship between the two companies can be summed up as that of a landlord and a tenant.
OpenAI makes money by selling the possibility of a trillion-dollar future called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). They are a company that sells invisible algorithms and models. But MS is a real-world landlord that already owns the physical land to run AI—over 300 massive data centers worldwide. MS is quietly saying, "No matter how smart an AI you create, the electricity and servers to run it 24/7, the infrastructure, is all in my hands. If I pull the plug, your genius brain just stops."
To break free from these fatal shackles, OpenAI is preparing for an IPO, or Initial Public Offering. It's a grand plan to move away from its peculiar governance structure as a non-profit for humanity and transition into a public-benefit corporation to attract more investment and become completely independent from MS, both economically and technologically. Recently, the two companies signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) on this structural change, but they are still engaged in fierce behind-the-scenes negotiations over key conditions like access to OpenAI's technology and revenue sharing.
In the end, the AI war will not simply be a performance battle of who has the smarter model, but will culminate in a massive land grab battle of who has more infrastructure. In this fight, will OpenAI succeed in its independence and build a third empire? Or will it ultimately be tamed by the logic of capital, becoming the most powerful technology department within the vast empire of Microsoft?
Oh, and on a side note, I am curious why Microsoft doesn't create its own LLM model. Amazon is making one, Google is making one... they have the technology, the money, and the infrastructure. Why not do it? It seems like it would be a great move and would boost their stock price a lot... As a small Microsoft shareholder, I'm very curious. If anyone knows, I'd be really grateful if you could let me know in the comments!
This battle of giants poses a very important question to us. We need to look beyond the technology itself to see where the real-world power that moves that technology lies. Developing the insight to read this grand chessboard will be the most crucial survival strategy for all of us living in the AI era.
How do you predict the future of this dangerous cohabitation will unfold?
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Originally published on YouTube: 10/21/2025