Altman Farce: A New Turn in Microsoft's Seven-Year Relationship with OpenAI

After unexpectedly being removed from the position of CEO at OpenAI, Sam Altman has been hired by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

On Monday, Microsoft hired the dismissed CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, marking another turning point in the seven-year partnership between the American tech giant and the startup that created ChatGPT.

Here are key moments in their collaboration history:

Establishment as a Non-Profit Organization

OpenAI was founded in 2015 by entrepreneurs and investors including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

It was established as a non-profit organization, releasing open-source research and software accessible to everyone.

Collaboration with Microsoft

In 2018, Musk left the project due to conflicts with the board.

Altman transformed OpenAI into a "capped profit" company and sought new investors.

$1 Billion Investment from Microsoft

In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, mostly in the form of compute credits, in exchange for a role in the future commercialization of its technology.

Microsoft's goal was to develop its cloud services and compete with Google (Alphabet) and Amazon.

Release of GPT-3

In 2020, OpenAI launched GPT-3, the third version of its large-scale language model trained on a massive amount of text crawled from the internet using Microsoft's computing infrastructure.

This model is significantly more powerful than its competitors, with approximately 175 billion parameters.

Supercomputer for AI Training

In 2020, Microsoft announced that it had designed a dedicated supercomputer for training large-scale OpenAI models.

Its cloud network Azure can now offer these systems to Microsoft's customers.

AI Image Generation

In 2021, OpenAI announced the development of DALL-E, an AI model capable of generating images based on descriptions.

Public Release of ChatGPT

In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a language model open to the public initially offered for free.

Microsoft Seeks Stake

In January 2023, Microsoft announced plans to "invest billions of dollars over the next few years" – reportedly $10 billion, according to US media – in OpenAI.

Microsoft stated that it is "investing in the development of dedicated supercomputer systems" to support its collaboration with OpenAI, but did not mention acquiring capital shares.

According to reports, Microsoft is attempting to purchase a 49% stake in OpenAI, valuing the company at $29 billion.

Integration of GPT-4 into Microsoft Products

In March 2023, Microsoft announced that it is integrating OpenAI's GPT-4 version into its products such as the Bing search engine, Outlook email, and Office suite (Word, Excel), but will charge users additional fees.

Microsoft Not Notified of Dismissal

According to US media reports, Microsoft did not receive notification of the decision to dismiss Sam Altman from the OpenAI board on Friday.

After attempting to reinstate him over the weekend, the group announced that it is hiring him and co-founder Greg Brockman.

Brockman hinted that they will continue to create AI products at Microsoft and announced the recruitment of several key management personnel from OpenAI for these projects.

Meanwhile, on Monday, hundreds of OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to leave the company and join Microsoft if the board is not updated.