Microsoft invested a billion dollars in OpenAI in 2019 due to their extreme concern over Google’s advancements in expanding its efforts in the field of artificial intelligence. An internal email exchange between Kevin Scott, Satya Nadella, and Bill Gates reveals some high-level discussions about the investment opportunity before Microsoft’s partnership announcement.
The email was sent as part of the ongoing antitrust efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice against Google, according to Business Insider reports.
In his email dated June 12, 2019, to Nadella and Gates, Scott pointed out our lag in competition after several years in the field of machine learning, explaining in detail how Microsoft engineers needed six months to recreate and train Google’s BERT language model “due to our lack of infrastructure readiness to perform that task.”
Scott had been against the initial efforts to use artificial intelligence at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, when the two companies competed to see who could achieve the most impressive results in gaming, as clearly seen through his review of Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo Zero offerings.
Silence quickly became more impressive when things shifted towards natural language processing models, as Scott said: “As I was trying to understand where all the gaps in capabilities between Google and us lay in terms of model training, I felt extremely concerned.”
Scott mentioned that some early artificial intelligence models from Google helped them gain a competitive edge against Bing, expressing admiration for Google’s excellent auto-completion features in Gmail that became remarkably advanced in 2019.
Nadella responded to Scott’s thoughts on OpenAI by forwarding them to Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer, Amy Hood, indicating that this was the reason behind her desire to do so. Hood is a key member of Microsoft’s senior management team, responsible for setting the company’s financial goals and regularly monitoring expenses.
A series of email messages were published in response to Nadella or Gates, while Gates left Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020. He is believed to still play a significant role in the ongoing relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.
It is not known precisely when the discussion about OpenAI started in 2019 through internal emails, but Business Insider magazine mentioned earlier this week that Bill Gates had been meeting regularly with OpenAI since 2016 and helped mediate the deal.
Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, incorporating its models into Office applications, Bing search engine, Edge, and even within its Windows operating system. Microsoft has helped in its transformation to be considered a leading company in the field of artificial intelligence, rather than staying in the background as it feared five years ago. Nadella made artificial intelligence and security one of the top areas of focus for Microsoft in 2024 and beyond, indicating that the integration of AI features in Microsoft products continues to thrive and evolve.
