OpenAI and SoftBank’s “Stargate” took the world by storm after announcing the $500 billion project, which they are collaborating with Oracle and MGX. While making the announcement, the ChatGPT maker indicated that up to $100 billion had already been injected into the project to facilitate the construction of data centers across the United States to bolster sophisticated AI advances.
Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly took to X (formerly Twitter), responding to OpenAI’s Stargate announcement:
“They don’t actually have the money. SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
Musk’s comments about the Stargate have seemingly raised doubt among key players in the AI landscape, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who shared interesting insights and projections about Microsoft and OpenAI’s multi-billion dollar partnership. For context, the Stargate project prompted both companies to rework several details from their initial agreement, which cost Microsoft its exclusive cloud provider status.
The Redmond giant retains “the right of first refusal,” making it the first option to host OpenAI workloads in its cloud infrastructure and services. However, if it can’t meet the requirements, OpenAI can source the services from competitors. The new agreement also retains four key elements from the initial agreement, including rights to OpenAI’s IP for its AI products, OpenAI’s API exclusivity to Azure, and more.
According to Benioff, Microsoft won’t use OpenAI in the future as it is already building its own AI for its frontier models. He also claimed there’s friction between Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Nadella says Microsoft will stay true to its AI efforts
Over the past few months, reports have surfaced suggesting that Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership, arguably the best tech ‘bromance’ in the world, is fraying. The claims were attributed to OpenAI’s complaints about its initial agreement with Microsoft. The ChatGPT maker reportedly spends wads of cash on computing power from Microsoft that barely facilitates its sophisticated AI advances, including AGI
Microsoft has equally complained about the partnership, citing GPT-4’s dismal performance. The company claims the model is too expensive and isn’t fast enough to meet enterprise consumer needs, prompting Microsoft to seek better alternatives from third-party vendors.
OpenAI’s recently announced $500 billion Stargate project stripped Microsoft of its exclusive cloud provider role. Despite key investor takes on Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, CEO Satya Nadella doesn’t seem too concerned about the evolution of the tech bromance.
In an interview with CNBC, the executive indicated that Microsoft invests $80 billion in capital annually in OpenAI and will keep up with the trend this year. However, he said that he wasn’t particular about the intricate details and figures of what other key investors are slated to inject into the Stargate project.
Nadella was also asked to share his opinion about billionaire Elon Musk claiming OpenAI and involved parties in the Stargate project didn’t have the money to fund it despite claims that $100 billion has already been set aside to kickstart construction of the data centers. Microsoft CEO seemingly dismissed Elon Musk’s claims, indicating:
“Look, All I know is, I’m good for my $80 billion. I’m going to spend $80 billion dollars building out Azure. Customers can count on Microsoft, with OpenAI models being there everywhere in the world, serving OpenAI models and other models.”
