Microsoft's AI empire, OpenAI is just the first cornerstone

In the past five years, the strategic cooperation between Microsoft and OpenAI has achieved key breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence. By integrating the strengths of both parties in AI algorithms, cloud computing infrastructure, and software applications, Microsoft has rapidly overtaken others in the fierce AI competition, surpassing tech giants including Google.

However, in order to establish a larger AI empire, Microsoft is no longer satisfied with relying solely on cooperation with OpenAI.

In recent months, Microsoft has been diversifying its bets, not only turning this tech giant into a global AI talent and technology "forum," investing in promising AI startups worldwide, but also starting to build its own AI capabilities internally to compete with OpenAI.

An earlier article by Wall Street News mentioned that in March of this year, Microsoft poached a $1.5 billion AI unicorn, Inflection, bringing almost all employees under its wing. Co-founders of Inflection, Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan, will form a new team called Microsoft AI within Microsoft.

According to reports on Wednesday by local media, insiders said that Microsoft AI will lead the development of AI models based on Inflection's technology, aiming to rival OpenAI's technology. Moreover, some of Microsoft's future AI products may shift from OpenAI's technology to the models being developed by Microsoft AI.

Is one OpenAI not enough?

The formation of Microsoft's own AI team indicates that relying solely on OpenAI may not provide enough security, especially considering that AI competition has entered a heated stage:

Google has restructured its AI division, launched AI products comparable to OpenAI, and integrated AI capabilities into its dominant search engine;

Meta has invested billions in developing a powerful open-source large model, Llama;

Amazon has invested $4 billion in AI company Anthropic and hosted its AI models on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform;

This week, Apple announced the integration of OpenAI's technology into its mobile operating system, further shaking up the competitive landscape of the AI market.

According to Microsoft's previous introduction, Microsoft AI will be responsible for integrating Microsoft's consumer AI products, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

Insiders revealed that despite AI upgrades to Bing, the results have fallen far short of expectations, still unable to change the fate of being "second place for eternity," leaving Microsoft CEO Nadella disappointed and frustrated. Nadella recruited Suleyman to join Microsoft in a key position, which was a desperate gamble to reverse the decline of Bing.

Discovering the Next OpenAI?

In order to consolidate its leading position in the field of AI, Microsoft has taken a series of measures to attract and support AI startups, thereby building its own AI ecosystem.

Nadella approved a plan to provide free computing cluster resources to early-stage startups, attracting promising AI startups, winning their loyalty, preventing them from being snatched away by competitors, and seizing the opportunity to discover new "stars of tomorrow" among them.

Microsoft has also reached agreements with companies developing large language models such as Cohere and Mistral AI to bring them onto the Azure platform. Through these collaborations, Microsoft not only expands the customer base of Azure but also injects fresh blood into its AI ecosystem.

Microsoft has invested $1.5 billion in the Abu Dhabi AI company G42, which will run its software and services on Azure.

Furthermore, Microsoft is actively engaging with AI startups using its high-level charm.

Reports indicate that Arvind Jain, CEO of the AI company Glean, has met with Nadella multiple times. Although he initially did not consider Microsoft a player in the startup circle, his AI assistant is now running on Azure, proving that Microsoft's actions are changing the perception of startups towards the company.

Collision of New and Old Teams, Where Will the Relationship Between Microsoft and OpenAI Go?

Suleyman will serve as the Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft AI, while Simonyan will serve as the Chief Scientist.

Both of them are heavyweight figures in the field of AI. The former was a co-founder of DeepMind and a longtime rival of OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, while the latter previously served as the Chief Scientist at DeepMind.

Reports indicate that Suleyman's team has received a large budget and extensive autonomy from Microsoft, and has absorbed other AI teams within Microsoft.

However, before making significant moves, Suleyman may first need to address the issue of team integration.

According to insiders, Mikhail Parakhin, the former head of Microsoft Bing and advertising business, plans to resign. He was initially assigned to report to Suleyman.

Saurabh Tiwary, the head of the AI engineering team responsible for integrating OpenAI technology into Bing, has left for Google.

An interesting detail is that the new employees brought in by Suleyman communicate via Slack instead of Microsoft's own Teams tool, which has caused some discontent among old employees At the same time, the arrival of Suleyman's team has sparked speculation about cracks in the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.

In response to the above issues, Microsoft officials stated that the new and old teams are in the process of getting to know each other, while downplaying doubts about OpenAI.

At Microsoft's annual developer conference held in May, Nadella stood in front of a giant slide with the words "Microsoft ❤️ OpenAI", with the word "love" represented by a blue heart.

According to insiders, all the changes and pressures have made employees feel overwhelmed, especially the challenging process of launching Bing's Copilot before the deadline in February last year. The ongoing work of integrating AI into more products has caused some employees of the project to feel fatigued