Microsoft agrees to invest billions in OpenAI
Microsoft says it is making a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment” in the artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and other tools that can write readable text and generate new images.
The tech giant Monday described its new agreement as the third stage of a growing partnership with San Francisco-based OpenAI that began with a $1 billion investment in 2019.
The partnership positions Microsoft to sharpen its competition with Google in commercializing AI breakthroughs that could transform numerous professions, as well as the internet search business.
OpenAI’s free writing tool ChatGPT launched Nov. 30 and has brought public attention to the possibilities of new advances in AI. It’s part of a new generation of machine-learning systems that can converse, generate readable text on demand, and produce novel images and video based on what they’ve learned from a vast database of digital books, online writings and other media.
Microsoft’s partnership enables it to capitalize on OpenAI’s technology. Microsoft’s supercomputers help power the startup’s energy-hungry AI systems, while the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant will be able to further integrate OpenAI technology into Microsoft products.
“In this next phase of our partnership,” said a statement from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, customers who use Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform will have access to new AI tools to build and run their applications.
OpenAI started as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company when it launched in December 2015. The organization’s stated aims were to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”
That changed in 2018 when it incorporated as a for-profit business Open AI LP, and shifted nearly all its staff into the business, not long after releasing its first generation of the GPT model for generating human-like paragraphs of readable text.