Microsoft's huge investment in OpenAI was triggered by concerns that Google's AI research was too advanced



Microsoft

invested $1 billion (approximately 156 billion yen) in OpenAI in 2019. In September 2020, Microsoft acquired an exclusive license to GPT-3, OpenAI's large-scale language model (LLM). Furthermore, in January 2023, Microsoft invested billions of dollars (several hundred billion yen) in OpenAI and formed a long-term partnership . Microsoft and OpenAI are deepening their relationship year by year, but it has become clear that the '$1 billion investment in 2019' that began this relationship was made out of concern that Google's efforts in the AI field were years ahead of Microsoft's.

Microsoft's OpenAI investment triggered Google fears, emails revealed - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/1/24146302/microsoft-openai-investment-google-worries-internal-emails



Email Microsoft didn't want seen reveals rushed decision to invest in
OpenAI | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/email-microsoft-didnt-want-seen-reveals-rushed-decision-to-invest-in-openai/

As part of the US Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against Google, Microsoft has released an internal email exchanged in June 2019. The email, entitled 'Thoughts on OpenAI,' features Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates discussing the AI field at the time.

In an email to CEO Nadella and Gates on June 12, 2019, CTO Scott said, 'We are years behind our competitors (Google) in terms of the scale of machine learning.' Furthermore, CTO Scott detailed how it took Microsoft engineers six months to replicate and train Google's language model, BERT . CTO Scott said the reason Microsoft was so far behind in the field was because 'its infrastructure was not up to the task.'

Furthermore, when OpenAI and Google DeepMind were competing to see who could build the most impressive game-playing AI , CTO Scott said, 'Microsoft was neglecting its efforts in the AI field.' Research in the AI field focused on making AI play games around 2018, and Microsoft did not show a strong interest in AI research at that time, but as it shifted to natural language processing using AI, Microsoft's interest in the AI field deepened. CTO Scott sent a frank impression by email, saying, 'I realized that there was a big gap between Google and us in terms of training AI models, and I was very worried.'

Scott also mentioned that some of Google's early AI models helped the company gain a competitive advantage over Bing. In addition, he praised the autocomplete feature of Gmail, Google's email service, as a result of these AI researches, saying that it has become 'incredibly good.'



In response, CEO Nadella forwarded Scott's email to Microsoft CFO Amy Hood with the subject line 'Why I want to do this,' suggesting that he agreed with Scott's call for investment in AI. Hood is a key member of Microsoft's senior executive team and is responsible for overseeing the company's financial goals and periodically curbing spending.

Gates resigned from Microsoft's board of directors in 2020 following an adultery scandal with an employee, but previous reports have revealed that he has continued to play an important role in the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI since then. The 'emails from June 2019' released this time do not reveal who initiated the discussions. However, Business Insider reports that Gates has been meeting regularly with OpenAI since 2016 and has been brokering the deal.

The subsequent collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI is well known, and OpenAI's AI has been integrated into various products, including Microsoft's Office apps, Bing, Edge, and Windows. This has made Microsoft quickly recover from its 2019 AI lag and made it the industry leader in the field.

In addition, OpenAI is also reportedly working with Microsoft on a $100 billion data center project, including the AI supercomputer 'Stargate,' and the two companies are expected to continue to work together.

Microsoft and OpenAI are planning a data center project worth over 15 trillion yen, including the AI supercomputer 'Stargate' - GIGAZINE



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