OpenAI and Microsoft are avoiding a messy break-up
Microsoft retains access to OpenAI’s research until end-2030, or when (if) artificial general intelligence arrives, whichever is sooner – but who will verify the claim?
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BY FAR the most finicky part of OpenAI’s necessary conversion into a for-profit company was the reconciling of its convoluted partnership with Microsoft. With the year-end deadline fast approaching, they have made a deal both sides can live with for now, though it sets out the timeline for an eventual split.
Microsoft’s shrewd US$13.8 billion investment in 2019 required OpenAI to work with Microsoft and its Azure cloud platform – an arrangement that sent Microsoft’s valuation soaring.
But as the artificial intelligence (AI) race intensified, things became untenable: OpenAI needed more computing power than Microsoft was able to build, and Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief executive officer, wanted greater freedom to raise the money to do that.
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