During a Wednesday earnings call, a Wall Street analyst put Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the spot, asking how the company’s revamped partnership with OpenAI would affect its financial performance. Nadella responded that the new arrangement benefits everyone involved. “We feel good about our partnership with OpenAI. I’m always very focused on any partnership and ensuring that there’s a win-win construct at all times. I mean, that’s how you can remain good partners,” he explained.

He emphasized that Microsoft still retains access to OpenAI’s intellectual property—including its models and agent products—but no longer has to pay for them. Referring to royalty-free access to OpenAI’s most advanced AI through 2032, Nadella stated: “We have a frontier model, with all the IP rights that we will have access to all the way to ’32 and we fully plan to exploit it.”

There was no shortage of speculation that the revised deal, which strips Microsoft of exclusive access to OpenAI’s technology, might cause the software giant to lose its AI edge. OpenAI quickly announced exclusive AI products with Microsoft’s biggest cloud rival, Amazon, even featuring Sam Altman and AWS CEO Mark Garman in joint interviews about their collaboration. But Nadella dismissed those concerns. When Microsoft reported its earnings on Wednesday—the last full quarter under the previous agreement—the company revealed that its AI business had surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, a 123% year-over-year increase. On that front, Nadella noted that Microsoft still profits from OpenAI in other ways. “They’re a large customer of ours, not just on the AI accelerator side, but also on all the other compute sides. And so we want to serve them well. And then, of course, we have our equity.”

He was referring to OpenAI’s commitment to purchase over $250 billion worth of Microsoft’s cloud services, as well as Microsoft’s 27% stake in OpenAI. Finally, Nadella highlighted that enterprises often prefer to use multiple AI models, so OpenAI’s relative importance in the industry—especially to businesses—is no longer as dominant as it once was. “We offer the broadest selection of models of any hyperscaler, so customers can choose the right model for the right workload across OpenAI, Anthropic, open source, and more. Over 10,000 customers have used more than one model,” he said. Only time will tell if this deal truly proves to be a win-win. In the meantime, Microsoft continues to deliver cloud growth and profits.