Microsoft has been working with OpenAI since 2019, which is before OpenAI found success with its AI services such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. And Microsoft has just declared extending this partnership with an investment of several billion dollars over several years.
The investment will continue to fund the company’s research into AI and, more specifically, to develop AI that is “increasingly secure, useful and powerful”, according to OpenAI.
Microsoft said it will deploy OpenAI’s models in its consumer and enterprise products and “introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology.”
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Neither company disclosed the value of the investment, but sources previously revealed the investment would be $10 billion over several years, according to Bloomberg. This investment follows Microsoft’s initial investment in 2019 of $1 billion, and $2 billion in subsequent years.
Microsoft’s Azure cloud service will be OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, powering all OpenAI workloads across research, products and API services.
Last week, Microsoft announced the availability of its Azure OpenAI service, which allows enterprises to take advantage of Open AI models while enjoying additional benefits. The press release issued on Monday highlights the announcement and underlines the company’s intention to make its services more widely available.
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“In this new phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across all industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications,” said said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
The investment comes just after Microsoft announced a huge round of layoffs, with 10,000 employees losing their jobs, as the company tries to align costs with revenue and customer demands, according to Nadella.
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Source: “ZDNet.com”