Microsoft announced a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment with ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Monday.
Microsoft declined to provide a dollar figure, but Semafor reported earlier in the month that the company was in discussions to invest up to $10 billion.
Following Microsoft's previous investments in 2019 and 2021, this is the third phase of the two companies' partnership. According to Microsoft, the renewed partnership will accelerate AI breakthroughs and assist both companies in commercializing advanced technologies in the future.
“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,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a blog post.
OpenAI collaborates closely with Microsoft's Azure cloud service. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in July 2019, making Microsoft the "exclusive" provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI. Microsoft announced on Monday that Azure will continue to be the sole provider of OpenAI.
According to the release, Microsoft's investment will also enable the two companies to engage in large-scale supercomputing and develop 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 developed game-playing AI software that can outperform humans in video games such as Dota 2. However, its AI text generator GPT-3 and its quirky AI image generator Dall-E have arguably received more attention.
ChatGPT generates text automatically based on written prompts in a far more advanced and creative manner than previous Silicon Valley chatbots. The software was released in late November and quickly became a viral sensation, with tech executives and venture capitalists gushing about it on Twitter, even comparing it to Apple's iPhone debut in 2007.
The technology has also piqued the interest of Google executives, who stated at a recent all-hands meeting that while Google has similar AI capabilities, its reputation may suffer if it moves too quickly on AI chat technology.
Sam Altman, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, and John Schulman were among the OpenAI founders. When the venture first launched, the group pledged to invest more than $1 billion. Musk stepped down from the board in February 2018, but he continued to donate.
