Microsoft Makes a Big Bet on OpenAI’s AI Future with $10 Billion Investment

Although Microsoft appears to be cutting back across the company and stepping back from the metaverse, the technology giant is continuing to invest in AI.

Recently, Microsoft invested $10 billion into OpenAI, the AI research laboratory responsible for the creation of DALL-E, an image generator, and ChatGPT, a sophisticated chatbot capable of more than just chatting. These projects have captured the public’s imagination and pushed OpenAI’s valuation to $29 billion.

Microsoft has been working with OpenAI for several years and has already made two previous investments in the company. Recently, Microsoft released the Azure OpenAI Service, which it had been working on with OpenAI for four years. Additionally, Microsoft plans to integrate OpenAI software into a range of its products, including Designer and Bing. This move is seen as an opportunity for Microsoft to recapture some of its lost market share and take on Google’s dominance in the search engine market. As generative AI like DALL-E and ChatGPT continue to produce content without human input, some predict that 90% of online content will be artificially created within three years. Microsoft’s investment in cloud services and AI appears to be a smart move as the demand for AI continues to grow

Morgan Stanley released a report in December assessing whether ChatGPT poses a threat to Google’s dominant position. According to Brian Nowak, the lead analyst on Alphabet at the bank, language models like ChatGPT have the potential to disrupt Google’s role as the primary gateway to the Internet.

ChatGPT, which was made public by OpenAI in November, was founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman in 2015. Despite high hopes for its success, the project is struggling with the financial burden of server demands resulting from its immense popularity. Altman announced that ChatGPT had surpassed 1 million users just five days after it was released by OpenAI.