Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, the company behind the popular ChatGPT, in a strategic move driven by concern and envy over Google’s potential leadership in the field of artificial intelligence.
A series of emails revealed in the US Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, published by Business Insider, detail the urgency that drove this investment. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, backed the initiative after receiving an extensive email from Kevin Scott, the company’s CTO, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI”.
In the email, Scott expressed deep concern about Google’s rapid advancement in AI, especially in the gaming field, referring to the BERT-large and AlphaGo models (capable of defeating world champion Ke Jie). Scott also highlighted the difficulty Microsoft faced in trying to replicate these models due to Google’s infrastructure superiority and praised Gmail’s autocomplete capabilities, lamenting that Microsoft was several years behind the competition in terms of machine learning scale.
Although Scott acknowledged the capabilities of Microsoft’s machine learning teams, he pointed out that their ambitions were limited, and that they were lagging behind in terms of scale. This reinforced the need to invest in a company like OpenAI to maintain competitiveness. Nadella supported this vision, recognizing the importance of closing the gap with Google in the field of AI.
The initial investment of 1 billion dollars in OpenAI in 2019 has significantly grown since then, reaching 13 billion dollars. This strategic partnership has led to significant advancements in AI, serving as fuel for the development of OpenAI’s cutting-edge models, and for the integration of Copilot, Microsoft’s AI that uses the GPT-4 model from its partner, in all the company’s products.
Source: GPT-4 (OpenAI) and Copilot (Microsoft) exist today thanks to… Google? – Softonic
