Microsoft Corporation has announced a significant investment of $10 billion in OpenAI, a renowned artificial intelligence research laboratory, over a period of several years. This investment comes shortly after the company announced plans to lay off 10,000 workers due to a weakening economy and decreased demand for software. Despite this, Microsoft has stated that it will continue to invest and hire in key priority areas. Microsoft has not disclosed the details of the investment, but a source familiar with the matter has confirmed that the investment is worth $10 billion over multiple years.
Microsoft, which previously invested $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, is looking to gain a competitive advantage in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry by partnering with OpenAI. OpenAI requires Microsoft’s funding and cloud computing resources to process large amounts of data and run the advanced models that enable DALL-E to generate realistic images based on a few words and ChatGPT to create highly human-like conversational text in response to prompts or queries. The company is in competition with other industry giants such as Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Meta Platforms Inc. to establish dominance in the field.
The investment from Microsoft “will allow us to continue our independent research and develop AI that is increasingly safe, useful, and powerful,” OpenAI said in a statement.
