Microsoft Officially Extends Partnership With OpenAI
- Laurent Giret
- Jan 23, 2023
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Microsoft has just officially announced that its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI is entering its third phase. Following two previous investments in OpenAI in 2019 and 2021, Microsoft is announcing today “a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs to ensure these benefits are broadly shared with the world.”
The company didn’t confirm the $10 billion number that was previously mentioned in a report from Semafor. Anyway, the new agreement materializes what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously explained: We’ve just entered a new era of computing and Microsoft will help OpenAI to democratize its groundbreaking AI technology.
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“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,” said Satya Nadella today. “In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”
Microsoft highlighted some specific aspects of its extended partnership with OpenAI today: First of all, the two companies continue to collaborate on AI supercomputing, and Microsoft wants Azure to become the leading AI infrastructure on the market. Azure is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, and other developers can now access OpenAI’s technologies running on Azure via Microsoft’s new Azure OpenAI service.
Moreover, Microsoft reiterated today that it will integrate OpenAI’s technology into its consumer and enterprise products. ChatGPT is reportedly coming to Bing and Microsoft’s Office apps, and Microsoft also said today that it will “introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology.”
If OpenAI’s ChatGPT made a lot of headlines since its debut in the fall of 2022, the company has acknowledged that its machine-learning models are not perfect. Still, OpenAI’s cutting-edge technology is reportedly considered a “code red” for Google’s management, and the threat is apparently serious enough that Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin have reportedly been holding meetings with several company executives recently.