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Microsoft announced a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, the developer of the popular AI-driven ChatGPT.
The tech giant, which infused $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, did not divulge the investment amount in the "third phase of our long-term partnership with OpenAI". According to previous reports, Microsoft may invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI.
"We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratise AI as a new technology platform," said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft.
"In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organisations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications," Nadella added.
Microsoft will now increase its investments in the development and deployment of specialised supercomputing systems in order to speed up OpenAI's ground-breaking independent AI research.
It will incorporate OpenAI models into its consumer and enterprise products, as well as launch new categories of digital experiences based on OpenAI technology.
According to Microsoft, this includes the Azure OpenAI Service, which enables developers to build cutting-edge AI applications by providing direct access to OpenAI models.
"The past three years of our partnership have been great," said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
"Microsoft shares our values and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward creating advanced AI that benefits everyone," he added.
Azure will power all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and API services as the exclusive cloud provider.