I always had a critical eye on the huge missteps that Microsoft had especially when it came to acquisitions like Danger, Nokia, whatever the ad network they bought and wrote down, etc.

And then I listened to an Acquired podcast about Microsoft when they interviewed Ballmer as part of the research. He said “At the end of the day, it was only money”. In other words, Microsoft was throwing off so much money from their profitable businesses, they could afford to lose money and take risks without it having any meaningful impact on the company.

The deal with OpenAI is really a nothingburger as far as cash. They aren’t spending any. They are giving OpenAI Azure credits and in return have a huge upside potential.