Microsoft Expands Relationship with OpenAIMicrosoft Expands Relationship with OpenAI

Microsoft is doubling down on its collaboration with OpenAI to enable both companies to “independently commercialize the resulting advanced AI technologies.”

The tech giant said it will increase its investment in the development of specialized supercomputing systems to speed up OpenAI’s research. The two companies did not disclose the size of the new investment.

Microsoft and OpenAI have been collaborating on a supercomputer for years, resulting in its first supercomputer named among the world’s top five in 2020. Since then, the tech giant said they have constructed multiple AI supercomputing systems at “massive” scale.

OpenAI has used this supercomputing infrastructure to train ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, GitHub Copilot and other models. Large language models like ChatGPT need enormous computing power to run.

New categories coming

Microsoft also plans to introduce new categories of digital experiences incorporating OpenAI’s technology, such as the Azure OpenAI Service that gives developers direct access to OpenAI models to build AI applications. This would enable them to build on top of GPT, DALL-E and Codex. OpenAI models also are available through its API.

OpenAI’s models are already incorporated into GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Designer.

“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,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in a blog.

Microsoft also announced it would expand Azure’s AI infrastructure for clients to deploy AI applications at scale globally.