Microsoft confirms its intention to invest 'billions' in AI R&D

Microsoft confirmed the rumors circulating on the net: the company is really going to invest "billions" of dollars in research and development related to artificial intelligence. It is for this that the “long-term” cooperation with OpenAI was concluded.

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a common commitment to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as an emerging technology platform,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “In the next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolset with Azure to build and support their applications.”

Although Microsoft did not advertise exactly how much it is going to invest in OpenAI now, the company did say what exactly the money will go for:

Supercomputing systems that will accelerate OpenAI's AI research and help integrate its products globally
New AI-powered capabilities to help Microsoft apply OpenAI developments to its consumer and enterprise products
Microsoft Azure cloud platform will be the only environment where OpenAI will test its products and conduct research

In 2019, Microsoft already committed $1 billion to OpenAI. This partnership enabled the development of AI based on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

OpenAI AI developments are already being used in GitHub Copilot, DALL·E 2, and ChatGPT, powered by Azure cloud power.