TikTok is one of Microsoft’s biggest AI cloud computing customers

A source told The Information that TikTok was paying Microsoft almost $20 million per month to access OpenAI’s models as of March, making up nearly a quarter of the revenue generated by its increasingly lucrative cloud division.

Microsoft’s cloud AI business was on track to earn $1 billion in annual revenue, according to The Information, but the report notes that TikTok may not need these capabilities this heavily if it develops its own large language model (LLM).