Enlarge image
ChatGPT is one of the most famous models of OpenAI
Photo: Jonathan Raa / NurPhoto / IMAGO
Bloomberg gives a number: ten billion dollars.
That's what the agreement between Microsoft and OpenAI announced on Monday is worth.
"A person familiar with the discussions" would have confirmed this.
The number has been circulating as a rumor for some time, but it has not been officially confirmed.
But it is the deal itself: Microsoft and OpenAI speak of a “multi-billion investment” for the coming years.
Microsoft has been OpenAI's most important partner since its investments in 2019 and 2021.
The software group from Redmond provides supercomputers and cloud services for the development and operation of the artificial intelligence (AI) that OpenAI is developing.
The text generator ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E 2 are among the best-known AI models from the research organization founded by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other investors.
The partnership is now entering its third phase, as Microsoft announced.
The development and use of specialized supercomputer systems will be expanded "to accelerate OpenAI's groundbreaking independent research".
Microsoft's cloud service Azure will be further expanded to provide infrastructure for customers who want to use their AI applications on a global scale.
Azure is also the exclusive cloud provider of OpenAI.
Azure is the cloud behind ChatGPT and DALL-E
But the deal will also manifest itself in Microsoft's product range.
"Microsoft will use the OpenAI models in our consumer and enterprise customer products," the announcement says.
There is speculation about an integration of the technology in Microsoft's search engine Bing, as well as in the Office products.
According to reports, some of this could start as early as the current quarter.
According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the aim is to “democratize AI as a new technology platform”.
In addition, developers from all industries would now have access via Azure to the best AI infrastructure, the best AI models and tools, according to him.
OpenAI emphasized that it remains a company that is only allowed to make limited profits and is controlled by the non-profit organization of the same name.
Details on the distribution of future income from OpenAI developments have not yet been given.
pbe