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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had the quote of the week in response to a question from CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin about Elon Musk questioning the ability of the new Stargate Project‘s financial backers to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure.
“Look, all I know is, I’m good for my $80 billion,” Nadella said with a sly grin and a chuckle during an interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos.
As the zinger has circulated on social media, this has been misconstrued by some as Nadella saying that Microsoft is putting $80 billion into the Stargate, chipping in along with SoftBank, Oracle, OpenAI, and other equity partners. This is not correct. Microsoft is a tech partner in Stargate but not one of the major financial backers.
Instead, Nadella was referring to Microsoft’s own AI data center buildout — which the company previously said would total about $80 billion this fiscal year.
Given this prior context, that was my read on what Nadella said, and I was able to confirm this with someone who has direct knowledge of the situation.
In part, it’s a case of a sound bite being taken out of context. After delivering the widely cited quote, Nadella added, “I’m going to spend $80 billion building out Azure. Customers can count on Microsoft with OpenAI models being there everywhere in the world, serving OpenAI models and other models. That’s what I know.”
In other words, Hey, those guys are doing their thing. Here’s what we’re doing.
Given the widespread misunderstanding of the comment, it seemed worth a quick clarification. You can read more about Stargate and the implications for Microsoft’s OpenAI relationship in our earlier post, and listen to a related discussion with my colleague John Cook and me on this week’s GeekWire Podcast.
