Microsoft OpenAI Revenue Hit $10 Billion in One Quarter, Nearly 11% of Sales

Microsoft booked about $10 billion from OpenAI in a single quarter. That number, disclosed in a regulatory filing Microsoft released on Wednesday, is the clearest look yet at Microsoft OpenAI revenue, and it shows how much of the company's AI business now flows through one partner.

TechCrunch first reported the figure, which covers the three months ending September 30, 2026. Microsoft did not mention it in its earnings press release, so a lot of readers are left with the same handful of questions. Here are the answers, based on what Microsoft published and what TechCrunch found in the filing. For more coverage of the companies behind the biggest models, browse our AI section.

How much did Microsoft earn from OpenAI between July and September?

About $10 billion. According to TechCrunch, the filing describes the money as revenue from commercial arrangements with OpenAI, and that includes the revenue share OpenAI pays Microsoft.

For comparison, TechCrunch reports that Microsoft collected $24.1 billion from OpenAI across its entire 2026 fiscal year, which ended in June. That works out to roughly $6 billion a quarter on average. The new quarter came in well above that, and if Microsoft keeps up this pace for a full year, OpenAI would be worth around $40 billion in annual sales to it.

Is $10 billion a big share of Microsoft's business?

It is close to 11% of everything Microsoft sold in the quarter. Microsoft reported total revenue of $92.3 billion for its fiscal first quarter, up 19% from a year earlier, according to its investor relations release.

That puts OpenAI among Microsoft's most important customers. It also explains why investors watch every change in the relationship between the two companies so closely. When one partner accounts for about a dollar of every nine in revenue, its plans for chips, data centers and other cloud providers matter to Microsoft shareholders too. OpenAI has been spreading its bets, for example by making its models available through Google Cloud and by looking at buying Google's TPU chips.

Where does the OpenAI money come from?

Microsoft has not broken it down. TechCrunch said it could not determine how much of the $10 billion came from revenue sharing and how much came from OpenAI paying for Azure computing, and that it had asked Microsoft for details.

What is known is the general shape of the deal. TechCrunch notes that the revenue share has been reported at 20%, a figure neither company has confirmed, and that an agreement signed in April 2026 keeps revenue sharing in place through 2030, subject to a cap. Until Microsoft splits the number, readers can only guess how much is cloud spending and how much is a cut of ChatGPT and API sales.

Does OpenAI owe Microsoft even more?

Yes, though this is a separate figure. TechCrunch reports that Microsoft's receivables from OpenAI reached $7.2 billion at the end of September, up from $6 billion at the end of June.

Receivables are amounts already billed but not yet paid. They are not extra revenue on top of the $10 billion. Still, a rising balance shows how much business is moving between the two companies, and how much Microsoft is waiting to collect from a partner that is still spending heavily on computing.

Did Microsoft make or lose money on its OpenAI stake this quarter?

It made a small gain. Separate from the sales figure, Microsoft holds an equity stake in OpenAI, and changes in the value of that investment flow through its income statement.

In the latest quarter, Microsoft said net gains from its OpenAI investments added $207 million to net income, or 3 cents a share. A year earlier, the same line was a net loss of $3.1 billion, or 41 cents a share. That swing helped Microsoft's GAAP net income climb 32% to $36.6 billion.

Why is Microsoft's share of OpenAI getting smaller?

According to TechCrunch, Microsoft's ownership stake slipped to about 24% in September from about 25% in June. Right after OpenAI's recapitalization in October 2025, the stake was around 27%.

Microsoft did not explain the dilution. A smaller percentage does not have to mean a smaller investment in dollar terms, since OpenAI has been raising money and issuing shares, and its valuation is a separate question. OpenAI's rivals are moving toward public markets as well, as our look at Anthropic's IPO filing numbers shows.

What does this mean for Azure and Microsoft's AI spending?

The OpenAI money sits inside a cloud business that is growing fast. Microsoft said Azure revenue rose 48% in the quarter and Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $63.9 billion, up 30%. Its commercial remaining performance obligation, which tracks contracted revenue not yet recognized, jumped 73% to $677 billion.

The spending to support that growth is just as large. Microsoft's cash flow statement shows $39.4 billion in additions to property and equipment for the quarter, about double the $19.4 billion a year earlier. Other cloud providers face the same pressure, as Amazon's warning that AWS capacity is sold out into 2027 made clear. Microsoft is also trimming elsewhere, with a voluntary exit offer for employees.

Chief Executive Satya Nadella said in the earnings release that Microsoft is delivering "greater capability, choice, control, and cost efficiency" to customers. The open question is how long a single partner can keep supplying more than a tenth of Microsoft's revenue while that partner signs deals with Microsoft's biggest cloud rivals.