When Bill Gates warned Satya Nadella that Microsoft’s $1 billion investment in OpenAI might be a mistake, even he couldn’t have imagined how it would turn out. What Gates once called “burning a billion dollars” has become a $135 billion success story. Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI just reached a major milestone. The company converted its original investment into a 27% ownership stake in OpenAI Group Public Benefit Corporation, now valued at roughly $135 billion. The deal cements Microsoft as OpenAI’s primary partner and gives it exclusive rights to the company’s technology through its Azure cloud platform until artificial general intelligence is independently verified. Nadella said his collaboration with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman began in 2016, when Elon Musk emailed him asking for Azure credits. By 2019, OpenAI wanted to scale its research, and Microsoft saw a chance to lead in natural language technology. “When Sam said, ‘we’re going to take a run, you ought to be on it,’ that’...