Microsoft's folds losses from OpenAI into $4.7B expense line – "other" (www.theverge.com)

Microsoft disclosed in its latest annual report that losses tied to its multi‑billion dollar stake in OpenAI were aggregated into a $4.7 billion expense line labeled “other, net,” a presentation detail reported by the Wall Street Journal. The filing offers few specifics beyond folding those OpenAI‑related losses into a catch‑all category, leaving investors and analysts without a clear breakdown of how much of that $4.7B is attributable to OpenAI versus other miscellaneous items. This matters because the Microsoft–OpenAI relationship is both strategically central and financially material: opaque reporting obscures the true cost and risk profile of Microsoft’s largest AI partnership, complicating valuation and investor oversight. From an accounting perspective, OpenAI’s unusual governance and funding structure (capped‑profit entity with complex investment terms) likely complicates how gains, losses and equity stakes are recognized, but the aggregation into “other” prevents stakeholders from assessing investment performance, deployment costs (compute, infrastructure, R&D), or future capital needs. For the AI/ML community, the disclosure underscores how expensive and strategically consequential large foundation‑model ventures are, and it may prompt calls for clearer transparency and regulatory scrutiny around how major tech firms report their AI investments.