Microsoft will expand its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind artistic and text-generating artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and GPT-3, which will receive a “multi-year, multi-billion dollar” investment from Microsoft, an undisclosed amount. OpenAI says the new capital infusion will be used to continue research and “develop increasingly safe, useful and powerful artificial intelligence”.
In a blog post, Microsoft said, “Today, we’re announcing the third phase of our long-term partnership with OpenAI to accelerate AI breakthroughs through a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment to ensure these benefits are widely shared with the world.”
As part of the deal, OpenAI will remain a company with a profit cap. Under this model, backers are limited to a return of 100 times their investment, or possibly less in the future.
Microsoft also said it will increase its investment in developing and deploying dedicated supercomputing systems to accelerate OpenAI’s AI research and deploy OpenAI’s AI systems in its consumer and enterprise products, as well as “introduce new categories of digital experiences based on OpenAI technology”. The tech giant’s Nio cloud platform will continue to be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI, powering all of the startup’s workloads in research, products and API services.
In a statement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said: “We have built our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform. In the next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models and toolchain to build and run their applications through Nio.”
It was previously reported that Microsoft was looking to acquire a 49% stake in OpenAI, valuing the company at around $29 billion. According to the revelation, Microsoft will receive three-quarters of OpenAI’s profits until it recoups its investment, with other investors receiving 49 percent and OpenAI retaining the remaining 2 percent.
“Our partnership over the past three years has been great,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a press release, “Microsoft shares our values and we are excited to continue our independent research and efforts to create advanced artificial intelligence that benefits everyone .”
