OpenAI “disintegrates”, Nadella’s deity is revealed

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The latest news about OpenAI today is that Microsoft is providing a $10 million signing bonus “each” to 770 employees who resigned from OpenAI, which will cost $7.7 billion. The deal’s asking price far outstrips all competitors looking to poach employees from OpenAI. But compared with directly acquiring OpenAl, Microsoft still saved $82.3 billion. Just yesterday, Microsoft’s market value increased by US$115 billion in just one hour.

Before it was announced that Sam Altman would join Microsoft, Satya Nadella tried to mediate between Altman and OpenAI, bringing him back to OpenAI as CEO. In the end, with his help, one of the world’s most important artificial intelligence companies collapsed yesterday, but Satya Nadella was able to use it to make Microsoft even stronger.

Such a result may not be what Sam Altman really wants to see. Half an hour ago, the American technology media The Verge quoted multiple sources as saying that Sam Altman’s transfer to Microsoft has not yet been finalized, and he and Greg Brockman are still working hard to return to OpenAI. But on condition that he fire the remaining board members.

Regardless of whether the Microsoft deal can be completed, Nadella’s status in the technology world has risen to the next dimension. In fact, Microsoft has experienced record growth in the past decade since Nadella became head of artificial intelligence and CEO, thanks in large part to the success of its cloud computing unit, Azure. The unit leverages Microsoft’s long-standing relationships with its enterprise customers. Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and later succeeded Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014.

Former Snowflake CEO and longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia told Forbes: “For quite some time, I’ve considered Satya a wise man in the tech industry. , he is the Yoda who makes the right things happen. He plays the role of an adult in this company.”

Original title: “Satya Nadella and Microsoft are currently the biggest winners from the disintegration of OpenAI”

Text | David Jeans, Richard Nieva

After OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockma abruptly left the startup, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hired They join Microsoft in a move hailed as a stroke of genius for the tech giant that will help solidify its growing influence in one of the most exciting new technologies in recent years.

Last Friday, the OpenAI board of directors decided to fire Altman, and Nadella was also caught by surprise. Over the weekend, Nadella tried to mediate between Altman and the board of directors in hopes of bringing him back to OpenAI as CEO, but the effort failed. Nadella then announced before the stock market opened on Sunday night that Altman and Brockman would join Microsoft to run a new artificial intelligence research unit. Microsoft shares surged 2% on Monday, giving the company a market value of $2.81 trillion, more than 30 times the $90 billion valuation OpenAI recently sought.

On Monday, hundreds of OpenAI employees called for the company’s board of directors to resign and for Altman to return as CEO. Nadella reiterated Microsoft’s commitment to OpenAI while touting the arrival of his new hires. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources they need to succeed,” he wrote on social media platform X.

To observers, Nadella appeared to have pulled off one of the tech industry’s most high-profile acquisitions — albeit one without an actual acquisition. Taking on OpenAI’s leadership is an impressive move for a company notorious for competition issues, after the U.S. Department of Justice sued Microsoft over antitrust charges involving its Internet browser 20 years ago. Take it into court. Rishi Jaluria, a Microsoft analyst at RBC, told Forbes: “There were no antitrust implications when Microsoft acquired OpenAI.”

Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face and a former Microsoft researcher, said in an interview with Forbes: “This is the best decision Satya has made so far. Many people are beginning to think that OpenAI is becoming a fork of Microsoft, which is interesting confirmation.”

Microsoft had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Microsoft was once one of the most feared tech giants in the industry, but its image as an innovator has gradually waned over the past few years amid the rise of internet giants like Google and Facebook. Nadella’s surprise announcement underscores Microsoft’s resurgence. Benchmark investor Bill Gurley wrote on Twitter: “If you had told me 10 years ago, a group of the smartest engineers would have issued a threat like: ‘Do as I say or I will go. Microsoft job’, I wouldn’t have believed it. The reputation of this business has undergone such an amazing transformation (thanks to Satya).”

Altmann himself gave somewhat ambivalent assurances about his future on Monday. He posted a post on “Satya and I’s top priority remains to ensure that OpenAI continues to thrive,” Dow said. He vowed to continue serving OpenAI’s customers, adding, “The partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft makes this very feasible. .”

A report on Monday from The Verge suggested that the inconsistencies between Altman’s tweets may be silent evidence that the two are still willing to return to OpenAI on the right terms. By Monday afternoon local time, Nadella seemed to admit that the hiring of the two had not yet been finalized.

When asked by CNBC if he knew whether Altman, Brockman and hundreds of their OpenAI colleagues would actually join Microsoft, Nadella responded: “That’s up to OpenAI’s board of directors, management and employees. Come choose.” He added: “If Sam and Greg are not at OpenAI, we hope they have a good ending.”

Asked if he knew the reason for Altman’s expulsion from OpenAI, Nadella said he knew nothing other than a “communication failure” within the company.

Until recently, the opportunity to make a big splash in artificial intelligence seemed a bit away from Microsoft. “I’m very close to Microsoft, and two years ago I would never have believed that Microsoft would be a leader in artificial intelligence, and almost everyone I know would say that,” said Bob, the former CEO of Snowflake and a longtime Microsoft executive. Bob Muglia said in an interview with Forbes. “(OpenAI) is a golden goose that lays golden eggs, but Satya is feeding the goose.”

With Nadella as head of artificial intelligence, Microsoft has enjoyed record growth in the past decade, thanks in large part to the success of its cloud computing unit Azure, which has leveraged Microsoft’s longstanding relationships with its enterprise customers. relation. Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and later succeeded Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014. “For quite some time, I viewed Satya as the wise man in the tech industry, the Yoda who made the right things happen. He was the adult in this company.” Leah said. In 2011, Nadella succeeded Mulia as a Microsoft executive.

In the past few years, Microsoft seemed to have lost to Google in the artificial intelligence race because the latter was the first to make breakthroughs in this field, such as inventing the Transformer concept that underpins OpenAI ChatGPT and building an artificial intelligence that can beat humans at Go. machine.

But Microsoft has been optimistic about OpenAI for a long time. In 2016, the two companies jointly announced that OpenAI would use Microsoft Azure as its primary cloud partner. As the relationship between the two grew closer, more product releases followed, including supercomputing artificial intelligence technology based on Azure and subsequent cooperation with Github. OpenAI then released breakthrough developments in its technology. , the first was GPT3, which can automatically generate computer code and blog post content, followed by DALL-E, which can use artificial intelligence to generate photos.

With the development of OpenAI, Microsoft has invested US$3 billion in funds. “I’m excited about the endless opportunities that exist between our two companies,” Nadella told Altman in the interview, when he also announced another collaboration for 2019.

Even as Google and Amazon bet on Anthropic, a company spun off from OpenAI, Nadella has given Microsoft until the end of 2022 to take full advantage of ChatGPT, one of the most thought-provoking products in the tech world in years. Billionaire Charles Simonyi, the founder of Microsoft Office software (Forbes estimates his net worth at $6.9 billion), said Nadella is overseeing Microsoft’s next frontier. He also mentioned, “If you ask whether this is the most important thing in Microsoft’s history, in terms of technology, it is certainly the most important, comparable to Moore’s Law.”

Still, Nadella’s future as an AI leader appears to be tied to Altman. Earlier this month, Nadella and Altman appeared together at OpenAI’s first developer conference, which was a surprise. Together, they issued a call to AI researchers around the world. “Our first priority is to build the best system so you can build the best models and get them to developers,” Nadella told the audience. Altman turned to Nadella and expressed the same sentiment. Opinion: “I think we are the best partners in technology.”