OpenAI and Microsoft\u2019s partnership-turned-situationship just got even less committed. And a clause about artificial general intelligence, which has for years dictated the future of their deal, has officially been dropped.<\/p>\n
On Monday morning, Microsoft announced a handful of big changes to its long-standing OpenAI deal. Microsoft will remain OpenAI\u2019s \u201cprimary cloud partner, and\u202fOpenAI\u202fproducts\u202fwill ship first on Azure, unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.\u201d But OpenAI can \u201cnow serve\u202fall\u202fits\u202fproducts to customers across\u202fany\u202fcloud provider.\u201d That lets OpenAI pursue its goals of courting enterprise customers as it reportedly prepares to go public \u2014 opening the door to working with Amazon or Google, for instance, and attempting to relieve restraints on its compute that have led to spats with Microsoft. Microsoft appears to still receive a cut of revenue from these outside agreements.<\/p>\n
Perhaps more notably, the two companies killed the contract\u2019s \u201cAGI clause,\u201d which set a variety of conditions if one of them achieved \u201cartificial general intelligence.\u201d (It\u2019s a vaguely defined industry term that typically means AI systems that equal or surpass human intelligence on a wide range of tasks.)<\/p>\n
The change impacts a revenue-sharing agreement, which was supposed to stay in place until AGI was declared. But now, the revenue-share payments coming from OpenAI to Microsoft will only continue through 2030 \u2014 and though they\u2019ll continue \u201cat the same percentage,\u201d they\u2019ll also be \u201csubject to a total cap\u201d instead of continuing in perpetuity. The payments will also continue and then end \u201cindependent of OpenAI\u2019s technology progress,\u201d which under any reasonable logic includes AGI. So RIP to that deal.<\/p>\n
This is the second renegotiation of the clause. When OpenAI completed its controversial for-profit restructuring in October<\/a>, it needed Microsoft\u2019s blessing \u2014 and in the process of getting that blessing, the two companies struck a new deal<\/a>. Before the October contract changes, Microsoft would\u2019ve lost its rights to OpenAI\u2019s technology once the latter had reached AGI. But Microsoft\u2019s IP rights for OpenAI\u2019s models and products were extended through 2032 \u2014 and Microsoft\u2019s rights included models even after an independent panel theoretically declares AGI had been reached.<\/p>\n Now, there\u2019s no independent panel, there\u2019s no if-this-then-that language for if or when AGI is declared, and OpenAI may never have to actually announce if it reaches that milestone. Microsoft\u2019s license to OpenAI\u2019s models and products that it holds through 2032 is now non-exclusive. Any other competitor can now join in.<\/p>\n Microsoft previously owned about 27 percent (on an \u201cas-converted diluted basis, inclusive of all owners\u201d) in the public benefit corporation. The new terms state that \u201cMicrosoft continues to\u202fparticipate\u202fdirectly in OpenAI\u2019s growth as a major shareholder\u201d but doesn\u2019t dictate Microsoft\u2019s ownership stake, though there\u2019s also no indication it\u2019s changed.<\/p>\n The pressure is on for OpenAI to get closer to turning a profit<\/a>, and it and its competitors have been burning a lot of investor cash in their chase to acquire more compute and reach AGI. OpenAI has stated that it\u2019s going all in on enterprise and coding in order to chase those bigger potential revenue drivers, and it\u2019s been methodically cutting out so-called \u201cside quests\u201d like Sora<\/a> and ChatGPT\u2019s planned erotica features. It also restructured its science department. The new deal with Microsoft is one more step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI and Microsoft\u2019s partnership-turned-situationship just got even less committed. And a clause about artificial general intelligence, which has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24,320,66,157,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-18653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-openai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-microsoft","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-openai","12":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}