The practical consequence is a redistribution of negotiating leverage that had been frozen in place since 2019. Microsoft built its AI infrastructure story around an arrangement no other cloud provider could match — exclusive access to the models that defined the frontier. That story ended with the restructuring ending Microsoft's exclusive claim, and the enterprises that treated Azure as the only viable path to frontier AI capability now have options they did not have last quarter. What Microsoft retains is preferred status — a meaningful but categorically different position. Preferred…