2/22/26 When Satya Nadella pushed Microsoft’s board to approve a $1 billion investment into OpenAI in 2019 , the move was controversial even inside the company. As later reported by Fortune, Bill Gates cautioned that Microsoft might simply burn the money. At the time, OpenAI was still a research lab with ambition but without a proven commercial engine. The economics of large scale AI were uncertain. Training costs were enormous. Monetization was speculative. In hindsight, the
