Musk v. Altman Evidence Flags What Microsoft Executives Thought of OpenAI
·2 min read
Compiled by KHAO Editorial
— aggregated from 15 outlets.
See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◎ Multiple-sources
OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, its longtime investor and cloud partner, has grown increasingly complicated over the years as the ChatGPT-maker has grown into a behemoth competitor.
Key facts
Altman had told Tanzer that OpenAI could license its gaming AI to Microsoft’s Xbox video game division in exchange for “$35-50 million in Azure Credits.” But Xbox couldn’t commit that much money
After Musk reached out to Nadella, Microsoft in 2016 agreed to provide $60 million worth of cloud computing services to OpenAI at a steep discount
The email chain kicked off on August 11, 2017, with Nadella reaching out to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to congratulate the lab on winning a video game competition using AI to mimic a human player
The thread went dark for several months, but was revived on January 10, 2018, with an email to Nadella from Brett Tanzer—who signed off his emails with “Brettt”—then a director on the Azure cloud unit
Summary
But Microsoft executives had reservations about sending additional funding to OpenAI as far back as 2018 when it was a small nonprofit research lab, according to emails between more than a dozen Microsoft executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, shown in a federal court on Thursday during the Musk v. Altman trial. The emails show how Microsoft, at the time, wavered over what has since been held up as one of the most successful corporate partnerships in tech history. Microsoft worried that not providing support could push OpenAI into the arms of Amazon, the world’s dominant cloud computing provider at the time. Elon Musk’s attorneys introduced the emails to show Microsoft’s evolving relationship with OpenAI.