Already an initial investor in the OpenAI foundation, which developed the famous ChatGPT tool, Microsoft would like to invest 10 billion dollars in it. Fresh money that would do Open AI good, and which would give Microsoft an important technological brick.
Software giant Microsoft is reportedly negotiating a massive $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, the super ChatBot making headlines. While Microsoft is already preparing a version of its Bing search engine enriched with ChatGPT and has announced its intention to integrate AI into several of its software, such as Word, in particular, the company which is already part of investors (1 billion invested in 2019) would therefore like to increase their investment tenfold.
A deal that is not yet official and whose outlines are still being designed. But which should, on paper, benefit one actor as much as the other.
For Microsoft: a state-of-the-art and strategic technological tool
If you haven’t used ChatGPT yet, do it now: although imperfect, this ChatBot system is a technological feat that far exceeds all previous tools of the same kind. It must be said that the terms “AI” and “Chat Bot” have so far not gone very well together. From Meta to Google to poor Microsoft, each time such software has been presented, AIs have quickly fallen into racism and conspiracy!
Read also : Microsoft censors its new chatbot to prevent it from becoming racist (Dec. 2016)
Read also : BlenderBot3, Meta’s new chatbot, is already getting lost in conspiracy (August 2022)
By contrast, the delicacy of ChatGPT, which is not nourished by Internet users inundated with hatred, but not by selected and quality databases, has avoided overflows. But the tool is also and above all technically very solid. The control of such a tool would give a real advantage to Microsoft to improve its search engine. But also to develop quality consumer or professional tools – help service in Windows or in software like Word or Outlook, professional bots for its Azure cloud offer, etc. While we know that Google and Meta are walking on eggshells for the presentations of their next projects, the fact that ChatGPT’s baptism of fire went well should reassure the software giant. Who has, in his purse, something that OpenAI desperately needs: cash.
For Open AI: cash to finance an expensive publicity stunt
If Chat GPT has been at the heart of discussions for several weeks, it is for two reasons. The first is primarily technical, the quality of the results being unprecedented in the world of AI. This quality was highlighted for the second reason: the use of AI is free and open to everyone. Finally free, for those who “play” with it, because for Open AI, each response from Chat GPT costs, according to Open AI boss Sam Altman, “ a few cents per cat », in the order of magnitude of a one-digit number (between 1 and 9 cents therefore).
average is probably single-digit cents per chat; trying to figure out more precisely and also how we can optimize it
—Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022
Now, the whole world is playing with ChatGPT! According to figures provided by Open AI in December 2022, the daily cost would be $100,000, i.e. a net loss of $3 million per month. A loss that is not sustainable in the long term for a company that does not yet have economic models.
By putting 10 billion dollars on the table, Microsoft incidentally values Open AI at 29 billion dollars and would sign a doubly attractive deal. First, the company would have negotiated an interesting clause: once the agent is invested, Microsoft would capture 75% of the profits until it can repay its first ten billion. Time from which the company would return to its real level of 49% of the shares. The foundation retaining 2% and the rest of the investors the other 49 percent. Second, with the first billion invested, Microsoft had ChatGPT working (and optimized) for Azure. By strengthening its shares in the company (which is split into a for-profit company and a foundation), Microsoft could make the tool exclusive. A tool that many experts consider to be one of the biggest potential revolutions of the next decade. All the more so since Chat GPT is built on GPT-3 and its successor, GPT-4, is just around the corner…
Semafor
