Microsoft is working with ByteDance on an artificial intelligence (AI) project. Called KubeRay, it aims to design software to help companies run AI applications more efficiently.
It’s a collaboration that will not please the White House. And for good reason, the American giant Microsoft is collaborating with the Chinese group ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as part of an artificial intelligence (AI) project. Called KubeRay, it aims to design software to help companies run AI applications more efficiently. Ali Kanso and Jiaxin Shan, respectively engineers at Microsoft and ByteDance, discussed this original collaboration in view of the current geopolitical context, during the Ray Summit which was held on August 23 and 24, 2022 in San Francisco, reports CNBC.
This collaboration stands out in the current technological landscape. China and the United States are vying for global leadership in the artificial intelligence market and Chinese companies have not been celebrating in the land of Uncle Sam since a series of sanctions were imposed on the against several jewels of the Middle Kingdom, like Huawei, under the presidency of Donald Trump. Sanctions that have not been lifted since Joe Biden came to power. In addition, the visit to Taiwan at the beginning of August by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, only further undermined the already very tense relations between Beijing and Washington.
Microsoft and the aborted takeover of TikTok
In addition to Huawei, who had drawn his wrath, the former tenant of the White House had fought hard on TikTok, a Chinese app which is a hit in the United States and in several Western countries. Determined to ban TikTok from the United States, which he accused of spying on behalf of Beijing, Donald Trump had multiplied the decrees, before finally accepting that the company continue its activities on American territory, provided that these latter are taken over by a local company.
Microsoft seemed to hold the rope to resume TikTok operations across the Atlantic, before this takeover was finally abandoned. Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, was at the time convinced of the benefits of this merger, but today he does not really seem to regret the abandonment of the operation, assuring that it was a question of “the strangest thing” on which he worked during his career.
For the record, it was finally Oracle which was chosen last June to store US data from TikTok. On the Microsoft side, it was therefore in the field of artificial intelligence that it was decided to collaborate with the parent company of the Chinese app.