OpenAI: Microsoft invests around $10 billion in ChatGPT developer

Just a few days ago, we reported that Google was reactivating several founders out of fear of the Internet sensation ChatGPT and that Microsoft was planning an investment in the developer. Now the deal is done: around $10 billion Microsoft is investing in OpenAI to integrate its AI services into its own products.

Microsoft invests in OpenAI

With around 10 billion US dollars, Microsoft is intensifying its investment in OpenAI, the company behind the AI services ChatGPT, DALL-E and other tools. The partnership has already been in place since 2019, and will now be strengthened even further. Microsoft has now officially announced this on its own blog.

The talk is officially of a multi-year, multi-billion dollar partnership to “accelerate breakthroughs in AI and ensure that these benefits are widely shared with the world”.

According to various media reports, Microsoft is said to have put tens of billions of US dollars in hand to push the deal – no figures are given by official sources, however. Already in 2019 and 2021, Microsoft had invested in the company.

New AI features for Microsoft tools

The next stage of OpenAI’s collaboration with Microsoft aims to integrate new AI-powered experiences into its own end-user and enterprise products, among other things. Among them, Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service. But new products based on OpenAI’s technology are also to be developed in this way.

Using the Azure OpenAI Service, developers can build entirely new AI applications with direct access to OpenAI. “The next phase of our partnership will give developers and organizations across industries access to the best AI infrastructure, models and toolchain to develop and run their applications,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft.

It would also be conceivable that Microsoft would equip its Office tools with AI functions and also integrate ChatGPT into its own Bing search engine. Neither has been officially confirmed yet, however.

Microsoft’s investment is likely to cause restless nights at Google. After all, the Internet phenomenon, which has what it takes to take on the Google search engine in the long run, already kept Google CEO Sundar Pichai up at night.

ChatGPT, for example, is capable of remembering things you’ve already asked or even correcting incorrect information. It can even be used to formulate notices, poems, job applications and much more. However, it is still unclear when and in what form the OpenAI capabilities will be integrated into Microsoft tools.