[rossdavidh]

They are, but their biggest expense is probably cloud compute, and most of the "investment" that Microsoft made in them was in the form of cloud compute credits. Essentially, Microsoft has spare cloud capacity, doesn't want to admit that to Wall Street, and so covers that up by giving away the extra capacity in the form of an "investment".

Now, in the end, it likely won't amount to much, but if it keeps Microsoft stock up for a while, it may pay off for the executives involved. Apparently not OpenAI execs, though...

[ipsum2]

"Microsoft has spare cloud capacity" definitely not, if they're actively building out new datacenters to keep up with demand.

[klyrs]

> ... doesn't want to admit that to Wall Street, and so covers that up by giving away the extra capacity in the form of an "investment".

Is this just a wall street thing? I'm betting that this is an excellent tax shelter as well.

[rossdavidh]

Good point