OpenAI Seeks New Financial Concessions From Microsoft, a Top Shareholder

Negotiations between Microsoft and OpenAI over the startup’s plan to restructure its for-profit unit, which requires Microsoft’s approval, have entered their eighth month with no end in sight and new conflicts emerging.

OpenAI wants Microsoft, the startup’s biggest outside shareholder, to have a roughly 33% stake in the reshaped unit in exchange for foregoing its rights to future profits, according to a person who spoke to OpenAI executives.

OpenAI also wants to modify existing clauses in its contract with Microsoft that give the software firm exclusive rights to host OpenAI models in its cloud, and it wants to exempt a planned $3 billion stock acquisition of AI coding startup Windsurf from the existing contract between the parties that grants Microsoft access to OpenAI intellectual property, according to that person and another person who spoke to Microsoft executives about it.