Скачать или смотреть Microsoft’s Azure Exclusivity Bet — The Hidden Tradeoff

Microsoft’s OpenAI-on-Azure partnership began as a sensible, strategic decision that reshaped the modern AI era. This episode breaks down why Microsoft tied OpenAI’s core workloads to Azure in 2019, and how the delayed costs emerged as AI demand and infrastructure pressure accelerated.

You’ll learn what Microsoft believed in the years leading up to the deal, what the exclusivity structure actually meant in practice, and why it looked like a clean win for Azure differentiation and enterprise distribution. Then we track the domino chain that followed: rising infrastructure commitments, growing dependency on a partner it did not fully control, and increasing friction as the relationship scaled. The focus is not drama or hindsight, but the mechanics of how a reasonable choice can become a long-running constraint.

Key moments:
00:00 The 2019 decision and what “exclusive cloud” really meant
03:10 Why the partnership looked rational in 2019–2023
06:40 When capacity, scrutiny, and renegotiation changed the balance

Why It Made Sense explores one business decision at a time and explains the incentives, tradeoffs, and delayed costs that shaped the outcome.

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