Microsoft is boosting its investment in OpenAI after the spectacular success of the latter’s ChatGPT AI tool.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and OpenAI have announced the third phase of their long-term partnership, involving a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs and ensure they are widely shared with the world.

This agreement builds on previous investments made in 2019 and 2021 and expands the partnership to include collaboration on AI supercomputing and research, as well as the ability for each company to independently commercialize resulting advanced AI technologies. (Microsoft)

Meanwhile, Bloomberg said Microsoft is investing $10 billion over multiple years in OpenAI. Though this figure was not officially informed by Microsoft, Bloomberg quoted a person familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be identified.

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”

In a separate statement, OpenAI said: “In pursuit of our mission to ensure advanced AI benefits all of humanity, OpenAI remains a capped-profit company and is governed by the OpenAI non-profit. This structure allows us to raise the capital we need to fulfill our mission without sacrificing our core beliefs about broadly sharing benefits and the need to prioritize safety.”

Objectives

The partnership will focus on increasing investments in the development and deployment of specialized supercomputing systems to accelerate OpenAI’s independent AI research, and will continue to expand Azure’s leading AI infrastructure to support customers building and deploying AI applications on a global scale.

Additionally, OpenAI’s models will be deployed across Microsoft’s consumer and enterprise products, and new categories of digital experiences will be introduced based on OpenAI’s technology.

Azure will serve as the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s research, products, and API services. Both companies are committed to building AI systems and products that are trustworthy and safe, and have outlined principles to guide the industry towards more responsible outcomes.

During the course of their partnership Microsoft and OpenAI have created advanced cloud supercomputing systems at massive scale.

“OpenAI has used this infrastructure to train its breakthrough models, which are now deployed in Azure to power category-defining AI products like GitHub Copilot, DALL·E 2 and ChatGPT,” Microsoft said. “These innovations have captured imaginations and introduced large-scale AI as a powerful, general-purpose technology platform that we believe will create transformative impact at the magnitude of the personal computer, the internet, mobile devices and the cloud.”

Related Story:  Microsoft Mulling $10B Investment in ChatGPT Creator OpenAI

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