{"id":727062,"date":"2026-05-13T00:00:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T00:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:00:29","slug":"nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Nadella feared Microsoft would become &#8216;the next IBM&#8217; as $92B OpenAI return projection revealed at trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3f6c43b8539\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3f6c43b8539\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#TLDR\" >TL;DR<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_email\" >The email<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_return\" >The return<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_blind_spots\" >The blind spots<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_witnesses\" >The witnesses<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_admissions\" >The admissions<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_defence\" >The defence<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-8\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-as-92b-openai-return-projection-revealed-at-trial\/#The_hedge\" >The hedge<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/2026\/05\/Satya-Nadella.avif\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-main-content\">\n<p><em><\/p>\n<div class=\"postContent-tldr\">\n<h4 class=\"postContent-offsetTitle\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"TLDR\"><\/span>TL;DR<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p>Satya Nadella testified in the Musk v. Altman trial that he feared Microsoft would become \u201cthe next IBM,\u201d revealing that the $13B OpenAI investment was a survival bet backed by a $92B return projection, not a commitment to the nonprofit mission.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Satya Nadella told a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/11\/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-musk-altman-trial.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">federal jury on Monday<\/a> that he feared Microsoft would become \u201c<em>the next IBM<\/em>\u201d while OpenAI became the next Microsoft. The admission, drawn from an April 2022 internal email presented by Elon Musk\u2019s lead attorney, reveals the strategic anxiety that drove the largest corporate investment in artificial intelligence history. Microsoft did not put 13 billion dollars into OpenAI because it believed in a nonprofit mission to develop safe AI for the benefit of humanity. It invested because its CEO believed the company would become irrelevant if it did not.<\/p>\n<p>A January 2023 memo from Microsoft president Brad Smith to the company\u2019s board, also presented to the jury, projected a 92 billion dollar return on that cumulative investment, with a 20 per cent annual escalator starting in 2025. The document reframes the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership from a <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a> collaboration into what may be the largest financial hedge in corporate history: a bet by the world\u2019s most valuable software company that it could not survive the AI era on its own.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_email\"><\/span>The email<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"inarticle-wrapper channel-cta\">\n<div class=\"ica-text\">\n<p class=\"ica-text__title\">TNW City Coworking space &#8211; Where your best work h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ens<\/p>\n<p>A workspace designed for growth, collaboration, and endless networking opportunities in the heart of tech.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The IBM analogy is not casual. In the 1980s, IBM built the personal computer and outsourced the operating system to a small software company in Redmond, Washington. That decision made Microsoft and unmade IBM. Nadella was telling his team that the same dynamic was forming in AI. OpenAI was building the reasoning engine. Microsoft was building the cloud infrastructure. If OpenAI became the platform and Microsoft became the commodity, the company that defined enterprise software for four decades would fade into the same irrelevance as the company that defined enterprise hardware for three.<\/p>\n<p>Musk\u2019s attorneys presented the email to suggest that Microsoft\u2019s investment was commercially motivated from the beginning, undermining OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit origins. Nadella\u2019s response was to defend the partnership as mutually beneficial. But the email speaks for itself. The CEO of Microsoft was not writing about advancing AI safety. He was writing about survival.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_return\"><\/span>The return<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Brad Smith\u2019s 92 billion dollar projection landed on the Microsoft board\u2019s desks one month before the company publicly announced its expanded 10 billion dollar investment in OpenAI. The memo included a 20 per cent annual escalator from 2025, meaning the projected return would compound as OpenAI\u2019s models became more commercially valuable. At the time, ChatGPT had been public for less than two months.<\/p>\n<p>The financial calculus was straightforward. Microsoft was the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI\u2019s models and held exclusive commercial rights to resell them through Azure. Every dollar of OpenAI revenue flowed through Microsoft infrastructure. The 13 billion dollars was not a donation to a nonprofit. It was a down payment on a distribution monopoly for the most important technology of the decade.<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI is now valued at 852 billion dollars. Microsoft holds 27 per cent of the for-profit entity that emerged from the October 2025 conversion. The nonprofit foundation that was supposed to govern the technology retains 26 per cent. The alignment between mission and money that OpenAI\u2019s founders promised has been replaced by a cap table.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_blind_spots\"><\/span>The blind spots<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Under cross-examination, Nadella acknowledged that he was not aware of any full-time employees at the OpenAI nonprofit before March 2026. He could not identify any grants, research, or open-sourced technology the nonprofit had produced. He was not informed in advance that the board planned to fire Sam Altman in November 2023. He was never given clarity on why Altman was removed.<\/p>\n<p>The admissions paint a portrait of a partnership in which the investor knew everything about the commercial operation and nothing about the nonprofit governance. Musk\u2019s legal team wants the jury to conclude that the nonprofit was a shell. Nadella\u2019s testimony does not contradict that framing. It reinforces it from the perspective of the company that had the most to gain from the commercial side.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_witnesses\"><\/span>The witnesses<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The trial has spent three weeks accumulating testimony that dismantles every participant\u2019s stated motives. Greg Brockman, OpenAI\u2019s co-founder and president, disputed Musk\u2019s account of the startup\u2019s early days and testified that Musk had OpenAI employees do secret work on self-driving technology at Tesla.\u00a0Brockman\u2019s own journals, presented as evidence, contained entries that called the nonprofit mission \u201ca lie\u201d, undermining both Musk\u2019s claim that the mission was sacred and OpenAI\u2019s claim that it was preserved.<\/p>\n<p>Former board members Helen Toner and Natasha McCauley testified that Altman was untrustworthy, withheld information from the board, and sometimes lied. McCauley told the jury the board had \u201c<em>buckets of concerns<\/em>\u201d about Altman\u2019s leadership, including an incident in which Altman falsely claimed that OpenAI\u2019s legal department had cleared the GPT-4 Turbo launch in India without safety board review. The women who fired Altman in November 2023 told the jury why, and their reasons had nothing to do with Musk\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_admissions\"><\/span>The admissions<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Musk took the stand during the trial\u2019s first week and told the jury that OpenAI\u2019s leaders had duped him into bankrolling the company. He repeated a phrase that became the trial\u2019s refrain: \u201c<em>You can\u2019t just steal a charity.<\/em>\u201d He argued he was not opposed to a small for-profit arm funding the nonprofit but lost trust in Altman when he learned about Microsoft\u2019s 10 billion dollar investment, texting Altman in late 2022: \u201c<em>What the hell is going on? This is a bait and switch.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then came the question about distillation. Asked whether xAI uses OpenAI\u2019s models to train Grok, Musk said it was a <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a> industry practice. Asked whether that meant yes, he replied: \u201cPartly.\u201d The admission that his own AI company copies the technology he claims was stolen from a charity drew audible gasps in the courtroom.\u00a0Musk told the jury the case would set a precedent for \u201clooting every charity in America\u201d\u00a0while simultaneously acknowledging that he was using the charity\u2019s output to build a competitor.<\/p>\n<p>Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and the mother of four of Musk\u2019s children, testified that Musk tried to recruit Altman to lead a new AI lab at Tesla. He offered Altman a Tesla board seat. He asked Andrej Karpathy to send a list of top OpenAI researchers to poach. The man suing for breach of charitable trust was, according to the testimony of his own witness, actively trying to s<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trip<\/a> the charity of its leadership and talent.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_defence\"><\/span>The defence<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Altman took the stand on Monday. He testified that Musk\u2019s departure from OpenAI\u2019s board in 2018 was a \u201c<em>morale boost<\/em>\u201d for some employees because Musk had demotivated key researchers by ranking their accomplishments. Altman told the jury that Musk left because he lost confidence in the project and wanted long-term control that the other founders would not grant him.<\/p>\n<p>In a tense exchange, Musk\u2019s attorney confronted Altman with a text message he sent Musk on 18 February 2023: \u201c<em>I\u2019m tremendously thankful for everything you\u2019ve done to help. I don\u2019t think that OpenAI would have happened without you.<\/em>\u201d The implication was that Altman privately acknowledged Musk\u2019s contribution while publicly diminishing it. The text was sent three months after Musk learned about the Microsoft investment and seven months before the board fired Altman.<\/p>\n<p>The trial began with 150 billion dollars at stake\u00a0over whether OpenAI\u2019s conversion from nonprofit to for-profit corporation was a breach of charitable trust. Musk wants the court to unwind the conversion, oust Altman and Brockman, and direct damages to the nonprofit. OpenAI argues Musk is suing because he wanted control of the most valuable AI company in the world and did not get it.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_hedge\"><\/span>The hedge<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>While the trial plays out in Oakland, Microsoft is quietly proving that Nadella learned the IBM lesson.\u00a0Microsoft dropped its exclusive licence to OpenAI\u2019s technology, retaining only a non-exclusive agreement through 2032. It did so voluntarily, which makes sense only if Microsoft no longer needs exclusivity because it has alternatives.<\/p>\n<p>It does.\u00a0Microsoft launched three in-house AI models\u00a0that directly challenge the partner it spent 13 billion dollars cultivating. The company that feared becoming IBM responded by doing what IBM never did: building its own operating system before the partner could lock it out. Nadella\u2019s April 2022 fear that Microsoft would become dependent on OpenAI appears to have been the founding anxiety of an entire corporate strategy designed to ensure it never would.<\/p>\n<p>The trial is expected to continue through 21 May before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The jury will decide whether OpenAI\u2019s leaders breached a charitable trust and whether Musk is owed restitution. But Nadella\u2019s testimony has already answered a different question. The most powerful corporate backer of the nonprofit AI mission invested because he was afraid his company would die without it. The 92 billion dollar return projection was not a byproduct of the partnership. It was the point. The nonprofit wrapper that Musk claims was stolen may never have contained what any of the parties involved believed it did.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/news\/nadella-feared-microsoft-would-become-the-next-ibm-the-trial-reveals-how-much-he-paid-to-make-sure-it-didnt\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TL;DR Satya Nadella testified in the Musk v. Altman trial that he feared Microsoft would become \u201cthe next IBM,\u201d revealing that the $13B OpenAI investment was a survival bet backed by a $92B return projection, not a commitment to the nonprofit mission. \u00a0 Satya Nadella told a federal jury on Monday that he feared Microsoft&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":727063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/2026\/05\/Satya-Nadella.avif","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}