Microsoft is considering investing $10 billion in OpenAI. The startup is currently valued at $29 billion, Semafor reports.
According to the press, Microsoft would receive 75% of the AI company’s profits until it has recouped its investment. After such repayment, the corporation would hold 49% of OpenAI’s shares. Other investors would split the remaining 49%, while the nonprofit parent entity would retain the remaining 2%.
There are also limits on profit distribution for each class of shares. However, the caps on margins are not disclosed.
The terms of the deal and the amount of the investment could change as negotiations continue.
OpenAI is among the leaders in the field of generative AI. In 2022 the startup released two popular applications: DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT.
Microsoft has already integrated it into some of its products, including the graphic-design app Designer. The tech giant is also interested in using ChatGPT in Office apps and the Bing search engine.
Both companies have maintained a close working relationship for several years. In 2020 Microsoft announced a deal with the startup for exclusive licensing of its GPT-3 language models. Later this led to the creation of the AI coding assistant GitHub Copilot.
OpenAI is a major client of the Azure cloud computing platform and has access to a dedicated AI supercomputer cluster with “more than 285,000 CPU cores and 10,000 GPUs”.
In December 2022, the AI startup said it expected revenue to grow to $1 billion within the next two years.
In October, media reported plans by the tech giant to increase investments in OpenAI.
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