Microsoft’s OpenAI Investment Was Triggered By Google Fears

Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 because it was “very worried” that Google was years ahead in scaling up its AI efforts. An internal email, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” between Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates reveals some of the high-level discussions around an investment opportunity in the months before Microsoft revealed the partnership.

The email was released on Tuesday as part of the ongoing US Justice Department antitrust case against Google, Business Insider reports. “We are multiple years behind the competition in terms of machine learning scale,” Scott writes in his June 12th, 2019, email to Nadella and Gates.

He details how it took six months for Microsoft engineers to replicate Google’s BERT language model and get it trained “because our infrastructure wasn’t up to the task.”…..Story continues…

By:  Tom Warren