Hello, my tech-savvy friends! It’s Nuked here, and I’ve got some juicy news about TikTok and Microsoft that you’ll want to stick around for. Let’s dive into the digital drama!

TikTok has become one of Microsoft’s major customers in the AI cloud computing arena. According to a source from The Information, the social media giant was shelling out nearly $20 million each month to tap into OpenAI’s models as of March. This hefty sum accounts for about a quarter of the revenue generated by Microsoft’s rapidly growing cloud division.

As reported, Microsoft’s cloud AI business was gearing up to rake in around $1 billion in annual revenue. However, there’s a catch! TikTok might not rely on these services as much if it successfully develops its own large language model (LLM). Talk about a plot twist!

Last year, my buddy Alex Heath uncovered that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was allegedly “secretly using” OpenAI’s tech to create its own LLM. Now, that’s a big no-no in the AI community and goes against OpenAI’s terms of service. They’ve made it clear that their model output can’t be used to build competing AI models. And guess what? Microsoft has a similar policy since they’re the ones facilitating ByteDance’s access to OpenAI.

After this revelation, OpenAI decided to hit pause on ByteDance’s account while they investigated the potential breach of their developer license. At that time, ByteDance assured CNN they were only using the technology “to a very limited extent” for their own models. Sounds a bit fishy, right?

On top of all this, Microsoft has a multibillion-dollar investment deal that makes it OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider. They’ve also poured hundreds of millions into building a supercomputer to power ChatGPT. In their Q4 2024 earnings report released recently, Microsoft announced an impressive 29 percent growth in Azure revenue—just shy of their projected 30 to 31 percent growth.

Looking ahead, CFO Amy Hood mentioned that they expect Azure revenue growth to hover around 28–29 percent in Q1 2025. So, it seems like Microsoft is still riding high on the cloud wave. Stay tuned for more tech tidbits and keep those circuits buzzing!