Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked point-blank by a Wall Street analyst on Wednesday how its revised OpenAI partnership would impact Microsoft’s financials. His answer: don't worry, we'll be fine.

Nadella leaned into the deal's perks, noting that Microsoft retains access to OpenAI’s intellectual property - including its models and agent products - but now gets them royalty-free. “We have a frontier model, with all the IP rights that we will have access to all the way to ’32 and we fully plan to exploit it,” he said, choosing a verb that certainly raised some eyebrows.

The revised agreement means Microsoft no longer has exclusive access to OpenAI’s tech, which naturally led to a flurry of speculation that the software giant would lose its AI edge. OpenAI immediately announced exclusive products with Microsoft’s largest cloud rival, Amazon, complete with Sam Altman and AWS CEO Mark Garman doing joint interviews like they were old pals.

But Nadella shrugged off those concerns. When Microsoft reported earnings on Wednesday - the last full quarter under the previous deal - the company said its AI business has surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% year-over-year. That’s a lot of growth for a company supposedly losing its edge.

Nadella also pointed out that Microsoft collects money from OpenAI in other ways. “They’re a large customer of ours, not just on the AI accelerator side, but also on all the other compute sides. And so we want to serve them well. And then, of course, we have our equity.” By that, he means OpenAI’s commitment to buy more than $250 billion worth of Microsoft’s cloud services, plus Microsoft’s 27% stake in OpenAI. Just a little bonus.

Finally, Nadella emphasized that enterprises often want to use multiple AI models, so OpenAI’s relative importance is not as dominant as it once was. “We offer the broadest selection of models of any hyperscaler, so customers can choose the right model for the right workload across OpenAI, Anthropic, open source, and more. Over 10,000 customers have used more than one model,” he said.

Time will tell if this deal is really a win-win. In the meantime, Microsoft keeps delivering cloud growth and profits, and Nadella keeps his options open.