The immediate catalyst, it seems, is an intensifying focus on capex, or capital expenditures. Microsoft revealed that its spending surged 66% to $37.5 billion in the latest quarter, even as growth in its Azure cloud business cooled slightly. Even more concerning to analysts, however, was a new disclosure that approximately 45% of the company’s $625 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO)—a key measure of future cloud contracts—is tied directly to OpenAI, the company revealed after reporting earnings Wednesday afternoon. (Microsoft is both a major investor in and a provider of cloud-computing services to OpenAI.)
Oh actually are they? I admit I assumed they were doing the standard bullshit of everything is free to get you integrated, then they start charging. Actually maybe that already happened and this is the result of that.