Microsoft ploughs $1bn into AI firm co-founded by Elon Musk
Vendor teams up with OpenAI to build AI supercomputer on Azure platform
Microsoft is investing $1bn (£803.6m) in a new partnership with US-based firm OpenAI.
Founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, OpenAI specialises in advancing artificial intelligence (AI) to focus on the safety and social implications of AI on society.
The deal will see OpenAI develop a new hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
AGI is where a machine has the capacity to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
The companies will work together to build new supercomputing technologies for Microsoft's Azure platform and Microsoft will be OpenAI's preferred partner to commercialise its creations.
"AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time and has the potential to help solve many of our world's most pressing challenges," said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.
"By bringing together OpenAI's breakthrough technology with new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, our ambition is to democratise AI — while always keeping AI safety front and centre — so everyone can benefit."
Building on Nadella's commitment to ethical AI, the partnership will focus on building a platform that will train and run increasingly advanced AI models, that will adhere to both companies' principles of trust and ethics.
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, stated: "The creation of AGI will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity.
"Our mission is to ensure that AGI technology benefits all of humanity, and we're working with Microsoft to build the supercomputing foundation on which we will build AGI.
"We believe it's crucial that AGI is deployed safely and securely and that its economic benefits are widely distributed. We are excited about how deeply Microsoft shares this vision."