Microsoft has announced a multi-billion dollar, multi-year partnership with OpenAI aimed at accelerating AI breakthroughs and promoting the benefits of the technology to a wider audience.
This latest investment is the third phase in the collaboration between the two organizations and follows previous investments in 2019 and 2021.
The partnership will extend the collaboration across AI supercomputing and research, enabling both companies to independently commercialize the advanced AI technologies developed through their joint efforts. Microsoft will increase investments in the development and deployment of specialized supercomputing systems to support OpenAI’s independent research, while OpenAI will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to run its workloads.
Microsoft is looking to deploy OpenAI’s models across its own consumer and enterprise products, and will introduce new categories of digital experiences powered by OpenAI’s technology. This includes the Azure OpenAI Service, which will enable developers to build advanced AI applications using direct access to OpenAI models backed by Azure’s infrastructure and tools.
The collaboration is driven by the companies’ shared commitment to building AI systems and products that are trustworthy and safe. OpenAI’s research on AI Alignment and Microsoft’s Responsible AI Standard will help to guide the industry towards a more responsible use of AI.
Since its initial investment and collaboration with OpenAI in 2016, Microsoft has been working to build Azure into a global AI supercomputer, serving as the foundation of its vision to democratize AI. In 2020, the two companies announced their first top-5 supercomputer and have since constructed multiple AI supercomputing systems at a massive scale.
OpenAI has used this infrastructure to train its breakthrough models, which are now deployed in Azure to power AI-powered products like GitHub Copilot, DALL·E 2, and ChatGPT. These innovations have demonstrated the potential of large-scale AI as a powerful, general-purpose technology platform that could have a transformative impact on society.
“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, CEO of 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.”
“The past three years of our partnership have been great,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. “Microsoft shares our values and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward creating advanced AI that benefits everyone.”
This latest investment by Microsoft highlights the growing importance of AI in the technology industry, and the need for companies to collaborate and pool resources to develop the technology and its applications. Microsoft’s commitment to building Azure into a global AI supercomputer, and its ongoing collaboration with OpenAI, demonstrates its confidence in the potential of AI and its commitment to promoting its benefits to a wider audience.
The partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI will also have important implications for the wider AI community. The investment in AI supercomputing and the deployment of OpenAI’s models across Microsoft’s products will help to advance the state of the art in AI and make the technology more accessible to developers and organizations across a range of industries.
The partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI represents an exciting step forward in the development of AI and its applications. By investing in AI supercomputing and working together to commercialize advanced AI technologies, the two companies are helping to promote the benefits of AI and build a more responsible and trustworthy AI ecosystem.
Source: Microsoft
