The latest announcement by Microsoft and the AI company marks the third phase of their long-term collaboration and is expected by the former to help expedite AI advancements to make sure that the benefits are widely shared with the world
OpenAI secures multibillion dollar investment from Microsoft. (Credit: Elekes Andor/Wikimedia Commons)
Microsoft has confirmed a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, a US-based artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment company, apart from announcing an extension of their partnership.
Recently, a news website called Semafor reported that Microsoft is planning to invest $10bn in OpenAI, which has developed a chatbot called ChatGPT.
The latest announcement by Microsoft and the AI company marks the third phase of their long-term collaboration.
The multiyear partnership is expected by Microsoft to help expedite AI advancements to make sure that the benefits are widely shared with the world.
Microsoft had previously invested in the AI research firm in 2019 and 2021. The companies will now extend their collaboration in the areas of AI supercomputing and research.
The collaboration will also allow the two partners to independently commercialise the advanced AI technologies resulting from it.
Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said: “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.”
As part of the collaboration, Microsoft will deploy OpenAI’s models across its consumer and enterprise products and roll out new categories of digital experiences based on the latter’s technology.
It will include Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service, which enables developers to create AI applications with direct access to OpenAI models supported by Azure’s capabilities and AI-optimised tools and infrastructure.
Microsoft stated that Azure will drive all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and API services in its role of exclusive cloud provider to the AI firm.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said: “The past three years of our partnership have been great. Microsoft shares our values and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward creating advanced AI that benefits everyone.”