Microsoft and OpenAI begin third phase of partnership

Just a week after Microsoft announced the general availability of OpenAI on Azure, the company has announced that it has entered the “third phase” of its partnership with OpenAI. The multibillion dollar partnership began in 2019 and has steadily expanded since then as part of Microsoft’s AI supercomputing collaboration.

As part of the new agreement, Microsoft plans to build out AI infrastructure and supercomputing at scale, create new AI-powered model experiences, and become OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider.

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform. In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications,” stated Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft.

“The past three years of our partnership have been great. Microsoft shares our values and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward creating advanced AI that benefits everyone,” added Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a statement.

Microsoft began building up AI supercomputing capabilities in Azure in 2016. OpenAI has used this computing capacity to train products like DALL-E 2, ChatGPT, and GitHub Copilot.