Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella’s decision to throw his company’s lot in with OpenAI in 2019 has turned into one of the tech industry’s most successful partnerships, giving the software company a huge head-start in the booming market for generative artificial intelligence.
His closeness with OpenAI chief Sam Altman, underlined when Nadella turned up on stage at the AI start-up’s developer day earlier this month, has also highlighted how much he has personally riding on the alliance.
Beneath the camaraderie, a hard business logic has shaped the relationship. For Microsoft, OpenAI’s language models have become a key ingredient in the company’s latest AI-infused services, while the AI company needs Microsoft’s cloud platform — and money — to support its giant AI models. Speaking in a Financial Times interview earlier this year, Nadella admitted the two companies had developed a “mutual dependence”.