Microsoft has officially revealed that it is extending its long-term partnership with OpenAI through a multi-billion dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs.
The company’s partnership with the ChatGPT creator has already been in place since 2019 and will now continue in this multiyear deal as the organisations look to share AI technology with the world.
The partnership extension ensures that Microsoft will be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI, Microsoft will deploy OpenAI models to its customer base, and Microsoft will increase investments into OpenAI’s independent AI research.
Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, commented: “We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratise AI as a new technology platform.
“In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organisations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”
It is unconfirmed how much money Microsoft will be investing into OpenAI following the latest partnership extension; however, reports earlier this month have suggested that it could be up to $10bn.
Microsoft has already put big money into OpenAI in 2019, investing $1bn with the small San Francisco-based firm and reportedly adding another $2bn over the following two years.
Despite not revealing the exact investment figure, Microsoft has set out what the third phase of its partnership with OpenAI will aim to achieve.
- Supercomputing at scale: As mentioned, Microsoft will increase its investments in the development and deployment of specialised supercomputing systems. This will accelerate OpenAI’s research in AI technology and build out Azure’s AI infrastructure to help customers build and deploy AI applications globally.
- New AI experiences: The partnership will see Microsoft deploy OpenAI’s models across its consumer and enterprise products and introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology. The company has confirmed that this will include Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, designed to empower developers to make cutting-edge AI applications by giving them direct access to OpenAI models.
- Exclusive cloud provider: The third phase of the partnership between the two organisations will see Azure power all of OpenAI’s workloads across research, products and API services.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has praised the relationship between the two companies and believes that it will foster AI technology to benefit people worldwide.
“The past three years of our partnership have been great,” said Altman.
“Microsoft shares our values, and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward creating advanced AI that benefits everyone.”
UC Today’s Senior Editor, Jonny Wills, has recently looked into Microsoft’s aim to revolutionise the workplace by deploying OpenAI’s ChatGPT product.
He pointed out that at the 2023 World Economic Forum, Nadella spoke about how the company is giving access to OpenAI tools and the coding capabilities of ChatGPT. Allaying fears about the new technology, he said;
“One of the things that we think a lot about is how to deploy this technology to empower human beings to do more.”
Microsoft has already announced that it would give more access to its customers to the DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT models.
In a tweet, Nadella announced: “ChatGPT is coming soon to the Azure OpenAI Service, which is now generally available, as we help customers apply the world’s most advanced AI models to their business imperatives.”
ChatGPT is coming soon to the Azure OpenAI Service, which is now generally available, as we help customers apply the world’s most advanced AI models to their business imperatives. https://t.co/kQwydRWWnZ
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) January 17, 2023
It highlights that Microsoft is ready to monetise OpenAI’s product range, and the announcement of the partnership extension between the two companies has confirmed it.
Microsoft committed to building Azure into an ‘AI supercomputer for the world’ back in 2016, and the partnership with OpenAI doubles down on that commitment.
The two companies have already pushed the boundaries of cloud supercomputing technology with OpenAI creating ChatGPT, DALL·E 2 and GitHub Copilot by deploying Microsoft Azure.
In doing so, large-scale AI is now seen as a powerful, general-purpose technology platform that looks set to transform the internet, the cloud, computers and mobile devices.
