Microsoft is furthering its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, the immensely successful startup behind the trending chatbot ChatGPT.
Microsoft initially invested $1 billion in OpenAI four years ago, predicting the potential of the start-up founded by Elon Musk. However, the long-term partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI is not limited to finances. The corporation has even built a computer intending to power Open AI’s newly-developed technology.
Now, it has entered the “third phase” of its investment with “a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment,” cloud-computing support and supercomputer development. Although, the exact amount of the investment has not been addressed publicly.
“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,” stated Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft.
In this next phase of our partnership with @OpenAI, we will deliver the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain for customers to safely and responsibly build and run their applications on Azure. https://t.co/hX48N3vPv8
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) January 23, 2023
The investment allows Microsoft to utilize artificial intelligence technology developed by OpenAI. They hope to commercialize three key aspects of its developed technology: the development of an exclusive cloud provider, supercomputing at scale and new AI-powered experiences such as Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service.
This has also been the case with Microsoft’s search-engine platform Bing. Generative AI tech developed by OpenAI has brought popularity and many users to Bing, which is finally being perceived as a search engine that could potentially rival Google.
The race between the two corporations continues to heat up.
News of Microsoft’s third phase investment in OpenAI comes at an interesting time, seeing as Google recently announced the release of its artificial intelligence chatbot, LaMDA, short for The Langue Model for Dialog Applications. LaMDA is expected to be launched this spring.
