Jan 23 (Portal) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) on Monday announced another multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI to deepen ties with the startup behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT and set the stage for more competition from the competitor Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL.O). Google.
Microsoft recently touted a revolution in artificial intelligence (AI), building on a bet it made on OpenAI almost four years ago when it raised $1 billion for the startup co-founded by Elon Musk and investor Sam Altman provided.
It has since built a supercomputer to run OpenAI’s technology, among other forms of support.
Microsoft has now announced in a blog post “the third phase” of its partnership “through a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment”, including additional supercomputer development and cloud computing support for OpenAI.
Both companies will be able to commercialize the resulting AI technology, the blog post states.
A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the terms of the latest investment, which some media outlets earlier reported would be $10 billion.
Microsoft is devoting even more resources to keeping the two companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence via what’s called generative AI, a technology that can learn from data how to create virtually any type of content simply from a text input.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which produces prose or poetry on command, is the prime example that has garnered significant attention in Silicon Valley over the past year.
Microsoft said last week it intends to include such AI in all of its products as OpenAI continues to pursue creating human-like intelligence for machines.
Microsoft has begun adding OpenAI’s technology to its Bing search engine, which is being mooted as a potential competitor to industry leader Google for the first time in years.
The much-anticipated investment shows how Microsoft competes with Google, the inventor of the most important AI research, which plans its own unveiling this spring, a person familiar with the matter previously told Portal.
Microsoft’s bet comes days later, and Alphabet announced layoffs of 10,000 or more workers each time. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft warned of a recession and increasing customer scrutiny of digital spending in its layoff announcement.
Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, California; Additional reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Kirsten Donovan and Jan Harvey
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