Why is that ridiculous? Cloud services gives companies "coupons" and free usage for X hours for a bunch of other companies, why wouldn't they do that for a company they invested heavily in?
Because that's not how it works. Even company cars of General Motors employees have to be purchased from General Motors.
Such "free usage" coupons are marketing activities to gain new customers, Microsoft already completed the "dating phase" with OpenAI. They surely don't pay list-price for Azure but it's surely also not free.
