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Microsoft confirms multi-billion dollar investment into OpenAI

Microsoft will extend its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Donovan Erskine

January 23, 2023 9:40 AM

Microsoft

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Conversations around AI technology have gotten stronger in recent years, and ChatGPT is at the forefront of a lot of those chats. Created by OpenAI, this chatbot software uses machine learning to instantly provide in-depth answers to just about any question or prompt that users can present to it. Microsoft has been a long-time supporter of OpenAI, investing a billion dollars into the company years ago, and using ChatGPT to improve Bing. The early success of ChatGPT was enough for the tech giant to further solidify that relationship, as Microsoft has confirmed a multi-billion dollar investment into OpenAI.

There had been rumors swirling that Microsoft would be extending its partnership with OpenAI earlier this month. Today, the company made a blog post in which it officially announced that it’d be doing just that. While the company doesn’t provide exact figures, Microsoft says that it will be making a “multi-billion dollar investment” into OpenAI. Microsoft previously invested a billion dollars into the ChatGPT maker in 2019 and in 2021.

“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, Chairman and CEO, 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.”

Microsoft also talks about its aspirations to turn Azure into the ultimate AI supercomputer, and how OpenAI will help them along the way. While ChatGPT is being used to bolster Bing, the company’s internal AI research will aid Microsoft in achieving its supercomputer aspirations.

The announcement of this major investment comes just days after Microsoft announced that it would be cutting 10,000 jobs across the board. For more on Microsoft’s latest business moves, stick with Shacknews.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Scream nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_