News JVTech It’s official: Microsoft fires 10,000 people but spends billions on ChatGPT
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Microsoft is in the process of transformation. Determined to become the essential tech giant of the next decade, the company fires around 10,000 people and invests heavily in the next computer revolution to come: AI. In the artificial intelligence jungle, Microsoft has made a winning bet by laying billions on Open AI and its GPT Chat. Explanations.
Mass layoffs: Microsoft as affected as all of Silicon Valley
The observation is obvious: the tech and entertainment giants are generally doing quite poorly and are almost all laying off workers as never before. We are living in a moment of rupture. The proof: here is an overview of the different titans of Silicon Valley.
- Microsoft : Let’s start with the star of this article. At the end of October, the sites Business Insider and Axios estimated that nearly 1,000 employees of the company found themselves on the floor. This is only a drop in the ocean of jobs that Microsoft represents, but it is important to note that some strategic positions have been affected such as that of KC Lemson, present in the box for more than 20 years . Much more recently, at the beginning of January 2023, the ax fell: Microsoft has just formalized the elimination of 10,000 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce, before the end of the first half. It is enormous. The reason for this? Demand in the digital sector exploded during the pandemic, then fell with the big inflation that followed. Microsoft anticipates a lasting decline in demand, especially as the IT industry is experiencing its next big revolution: AI.
- Facebook : Meta, “new” name of the Facebook group, proceeded this fall to the largest wave of layoffs in its history. Mark Zuckerberg made the decision to “let go” 11,000 people, or about 13% of the total workforce.
- Amazon : The information dates from November. Amazon is said to be laying off approximately 10,000 people, about 1% of the workforce. This is the biggest layoff plan in the history of the mega company. The market valuation of the firm of Jeff Bezos has been divided by more than 2 in just over 1 year (1000 billion losses).
- Google : The Mountainview firm recently fired half of the workforce of its start-up incubator, Area 120. In July, an internal memo from Google’s CEO leaked, announcing “difficult times.”
- Snapchat : At the end of August, we learned that Snap Inc. was going to fire about 20% of its employees, or about 6,500 employees. Some top executives from the yellow phantom jumped ship to go to Netflix.
- Twitter : You probably already know that since Elon Musk has been at the helm of the social network, the billionaire has been laying off with a vengeance. Sometimes, Elon Musk has even released entire teams of people who are quite essential for the proper functioning of the site. Until recently, users even feared that Twitter was living its last moments.
- disney : Our colleagues from variety unveiled an internal memo from Bob Chapek, CEO of the big-eared firm, in early November. The message from the boss of Disnet is clear: it is the decree of a hiring freeze and the start of a redundancy plan. The objective is of course to considerably reduce the costs for Mickey’s house, the stock market price of which has fallen quite a bit and whose streaming service, Disney+, has recorded a net loss of around 1.5 billion dollars.
In the middle of this hell, a way out emerges. This way out is the fabulous building site for the future represented by artificial intelligence. AI is already changing our daily lives and Microsoft intends to use as much of this big cake as possible.
GPT / Open AI chat: Microsoft big winner of the AI race?
Just because Microsoft fires 10,000 people doesn’t mean the company doesn’t have ideas. While cleaning up its teams, especially at Xbox and Bethesda, the M of GAFAM is in the process of recruiting and investing massively in what Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, calls “the next big wave of computing”: AI.
If the company missed the advent of the smartphone, it seems very well on its way to taking the lead in the era of artificial intelligence. People who closely follow the small world of AI, generative or not, already know that Microsoft has been investing heavily in the industry for about a decade. Microsoft’s latest big move, the one that gives the multinational a head start over its competitors, is called Open AI.
Everyone is talking about Open AI right now! For the bottom 3 that don’t follow, it’s the box behind DALLE-2 and ChatGPT, two awesome generative AIs (DALL-E generates images from a description you provide and ChatGPT responds to all questions you can ask yourself, writes poems, writes dissertations, press articles…). Far from being mere gimmicks, Open AI AIs are already having a huge impact on the lives of millions of people. ChatGPT’s servers are almost constantly saturated with people. Well imagine that Microsoft is largely responsible for this huge success.
In 2019 and 2021, Microsoft pumped quite a bit of money into the box, and that investment is paying off. In 2023, we are entering the “third phase” of the collaboration between Open AI and Microsoft. On Monday, January 23, 2023, Microsoft confirmed that a massive new investment in Open AI is coming. What exact sum are we talking about? Nothing official has been announced but some American media are talking about 10 billion dollars. In any case, experts around the world expect a huge sum.
The partnership between Microsoft and Open AI goes a long way. Thanks to the latter, Microsoft could very soon use the power of generative AIs in its products for the general public and for professionals. Some talk, for example, of incorporating ChatGPT into the Bing search engine, which could eventually threaten Google.
