When OpenAI was busy experimenting with AI-powered gaming bots, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were in the early days of forming an AI partnership. Court documents are ongoing Musk v. Altman The trial provided a rare look into communications among Microsoft’s top executives over the investment in OpenAI and fears that the AI startup might “crack Amazon” and “talk trash” with Microsoft.
Just days after OpenAI demonstrated a robot that outperforms… Dota 2 In the summer of 2017, Altman responded to Nadella’s congratulatory email with a proposal for a much larger partnership with OpenAI to fund the next phase of AI research. OpenAI needed large amounts of computing to scale Dota 2 The project, far exceeds the Azure credits it was using from Microsoft at the time. “Probably about $300 million at Azure list prices,” according to Altman. This initially alarmed some executives within Microsoft.
“For these numbers to make sense, we would have to generate significant additional revenue directly due to the deal ($500 million+) that could not have been obtained in a more efficient manner,” Jason Zander, who was head of Microsoft Azure at the time, said in an August 2017 email to Nadella.
Altman came back with an alternative proposal several months later “to create a partnership with Xbox around gaming, and an open offer to share their technology and intellectual property in exchange for expanded sponsorship of their company.” Dota “Research,” says Brett Tanzer, now vice president of Azure Solutions and Ecosystem. The Xbox team was interested in “exploring collaboration opportunities,” but was unable to commit to the research costs on its own.
Then, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott commented on the controversy over whether OpenAI should be given more Azure credits for its research in an email to Nadella in January 2018. He wasn’t sure what Microsoft would get out of it. [the deal]“I wasn’t sure how Dota The effort would benefit the company, but he was certainly concerned about OpenAI moving to Microsoft’s biggest cloud competitor.
“I think the other thing to think about here is the PR downside of us not funding them, having them storm Amazon in a rage and talk us and Azure on their way out,” Scott said in his January 2018 email. “They’re building credibility in the AI community very quickly, they’re hiring well, and they’ll be an influential voice. All things being equal, I’d like them to have promoters of the Microsoft and Azure network. I’m not sure that alone is worth what they’re asking for.”
A year later, Scott admitted in an email to Nadella and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates that he was “strongly disapproving” of the AI efforts at OpenAI and Google DeepMind when the two companies were competing to see who “could achieve the most impressive gameplay.” Scott became more impressed as OpenAI moved toward natural language processing models, and feared that Microsoft would fall behind Google’s AI efforts. A month after Scott sent an email titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI.
Nearly seven years later, the close partnership-turned-stand led OpenAI to renegotiate its deal with Microsoft to bring its AI models, codex, and other tools to AWS. The latest change to the deal was announced just days after the “traffic talk” that had Scott worrying about OpenAI. OpenAI told its employees last month that its deal with Microsoft had also “limited our ability to meet companies where they are – and that, for many, is critical.” [Amazon] Foundation stone.”
