TikTok Spending Drove Microsoft’s Booming AI Business

Microsoft has had success reselling OpenAI’s artificial intelligence to its cloud customers, a core part of its plan to build a new multibillion-dollar profit machine. New data show which customers are powering the business.

TikTok, for instance, was paying nearly $20 million per month to buy OpenAI’s models through Microsoft as of March, according to someone who saw internal financial documents about it. That was close to 25% of the total revenue Microsoft was generating from the business, when it was on pace to generate $1 billion annually, or $83 million per month, this person said.