Microsoft announced a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment, on Monday, with ChatGPT- maker OpenAI.
Though Microsoft did not mention the specific amount in dollars, Semafor, a global news agency, earlier said that Microsoft was seeking to invest as much as $10 billion this month.
Since Microsoft’s last investments, in 2019 and 2021, this deal is the third phase of the partnership between the two companies. The partnership will increase developments in AI and aid both companies to commercialize advanced technologies in the future.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a blog post said, “We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform.”
OpenAI and Microsoft’s cloud service Azure work closely. Microsoft acquired OpenAI with $1 billion in July 2019, and it made Microsoft the “exclusive” provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI. On Monday, Microsoft said that Azure will abide by its services as OpenAI’s exclusive provider.
The release said Microsoft’s investment will facilitate both companies to use supercomputing at scale and build new AI-powered experiences.
OpenAI is ranked as one of the top three AI labs in the world by AI researchers and the company has also introduced game-playing AI software that can defeat humans in video games like Dota2. However, its AI text generator GPT-3 and eccentric image generator Dall-E has attracted more attention.
ChatGPT generates tests based on the fashion that’s more advanced and creative than the chatbots of Silicon Valley’s past. The software was released in late November and soon became trending as executives and venture capitalists talked about it on Twitter and compared it with Apple’s debut of the iPhone in 2007.
In addition, Google executives were attracted to this technology. They said that while Google has similar AI features, its reputation might suffer if it advances too quickly towards AI chat technology.
OpenAI was founded by Sam Altman, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, and John Schulman. The group of founders promised to invest over $1 billion into the technology when it launched. Musk stepped down as a board member in February 2018 but remained a donor.
