When President Donald Trump joined tech executives on Tuesday to tout a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence project led in part by OpenAI, one question sprang to mind: Where’s Microsoft Corp.?

The Stargate joint venture and rejiggered partnership with OpenAI also lets Microsoft offload some AI spending onto rivals. That’s a positive development for a company that has pledged to lavish US$80 billion this fiscal year on capital expenditures and is monetizing those investments at a slower pace than Wall Street would prefer.