The relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI has become more complicated. In the 10-K document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Microsoft officially listed OpenAI as a competitor, and the list also includes companies such as Amazon, Google, and Meta that have existed before.
Although Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest investor, having invested approximately US$13 billion in it and serving as its exclusive cloud service provider, applying OpenAI’s AI models to commercial and consumer products, the partnership between the two companies seems to be undergoing subtle changes.
In the filing, Microsoft identified OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT chatbot, as a competitor in artificial intelligence products and in search and news advertising. Last week, OpenAI released a prototype search engine called SearchGPT.
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An OpenAI spokesperson said that there has been no change in the relationship between the two companies, Microsoft remains a good partner of OpenAI, and when the partnership was established, the two parties had reached a consensus that competition might occur.
However, relations between the two companies have been turbulent this year. In November last year, OpenAI’s board of directors ousted CEO Sam Altman without Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s knowledge. After Altman’s quick reinstatement, OpenAI gave Microsoft a non-voting board seat, but Microsoft gave up the seat earlier this month.
In March this year, Nadella hired DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleiman as the new CEO of Microsoft’s AI department, and several Inflection employees also joined Microsoft. DeepMind is an AI research company established earlier than OpenAI and was acquired by Google in 2014.