Microsoft resells the frontier: Azure passes $100B but Google Cloud grows 82%

微软转售前沿：Azure 年营收破千亿但增速被 Google Cloud 反超

Azure closed its fiscal year above $100B in revenue at 41% growth, but Google Cloud grew 82% in the same quarter. The gap comes down to economics: Google owns its models and TPUs, pushing cloud operating margin from 20.7% to 35.6%, while Microsoft mostly rents Nvidia GPUs and resells OpenAI models, paying someone else's margin on every workload. Nearly half of Microsoft's $678B contracted backlog traces to OpenAI, a single customer that funds its commitments from capital markets rather than profits. Nvidia's five-year CDS hit a record 82 bps Monday, and S&P downgraded Oracle to one notch above junk, both citing OpenAI as a central credit risk. Microsoft's CFO frames GPU-heavy capex as flexible—you can slow purchases if demand shifts—but the real story is that Maia and Cobalt aren't ready to carry the load yet.

Why it matters: Tomasz Tunguz breaks down two cloud AI strategies with concrete financials: own models + chips vs. rent GPUs + resell. Azure's $100B revenue and the fact that nearly half of its $678B backlog comes from OpenAI alone are sharp data points. Not scoring higher because this is a f...