“AI must create positive-sum value, not extract it,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Like other big tech executives, the Indian-born Satya Nadella enjoys strong popularity in a country where engineering degrees are seen as a path to prosperity.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that the AI era must shift away from zero-sum thinking and toward shared economic growth. In a new post, he emphasised that “AI must create positive-sum value, not extract it,” arguing that companies should use this technological wave to build their own capabilities instead of unintentionally handing over their core value to the tech sector. “A platform becomes real when the economic value of everyone using it exceeds the value of the company that created it,” Nadella wrote, echoing Bill Gates’ long-standing definition.

Partnerships that distribute value

Nadella pointed to Microsoft’s work with OpenAI as an example of a partnership that strengthened both sides. “Our investment helped them scale; their research accelerated our own innovation,” he said. He also highlighted collaboration with Nvidia, noting that the world’s first AI superfactory was “co-designed with OpenAI and informed by three generations of AI supercomputers” that the companies worked on together. Bringing AMD into the inference fleet, he added, allowed AMD to “get up to speed on their own AI software stack.”

According to Nadella, this shared infrastructure will now support startups and enterprises building their own AI-native capabilities.

Broad economic impact

Nadella said the AI wave will prove its value only when industries outside tech start seeing transformative gains. “The real test won’t be another valuation record,” he wrote. “It will be when a pharma company brings a new therapy to market in one year instead of twelve, or when a farmer predicts and prevents crop failure.”

He warned that companies must ensure sovereignty over their data and value chains, adding, “This time, we have the opportunity to ensure broad diffusion of this tech with choice and control.”