Microsoft AI boss likens OpenAI partnership to a sibling rivalry
- Mustafa Suleyman said Microsoft and Open AI are like "siblings" with a good relationship who sometimes "squabble."
- Microsoft has increased its investment in OpenAI since first partnering in 2019.
Microsoft may be gearing up to be less reliant on OpenAI by developing its own large language model, but the company's AI boss, Mustafa Suleyman, said that the two companies enjoy more of a good-natured sibling rivalry.
In a recent episode of the "On with Kara Swisher" podcast, the Microsoft AI CEO said that the company has a "good relationship" with OpenAI despite building competing products.
"We are siblings," Suleyman said. "Sometimes they squabble, but largely we're on the same team."
Microsoft is now developing its own in-house AI model, reportedly dubbed MAI-1, and OpenAI has launched GPT-4o and o1-preview. But Suleyman dispelled any notion of ill will between the two and said competition is a "healthy and a natural part of things."
Microsoft has been closely partnered with OpenAI since 2019, when it first invested $1 billion into the ChatGPT maker — a move that Suleyman believes will go down "in corporate history."
"It was also brave," he said. "I mean, a billion dollars in 2019 on a technology that was very, very far from doing anything in practice. It was pure research."
Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft immediately responded to Business Insider's request for comment.
Microsoft, which just invested hundreds of millions in OpenAI's latest mega-funding round, adding to its previously reported total of $13 billion, has fostered deep ties between the companies that have led to close collaboration "on everything from the research side to core infrastructure," Suleyman said.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella prominently supported Sam Altman following the OpenAI founder's dramatic ousting last November, offering him and OpenAI president Greg Brockman roles at Microsoft. The two were briefly announced to "lead a new advanced AI research team," a group now known as Microsoft AI.
While Altman and Brockman ended up quickly returning back to OpenAI, Suleyman was brought on instead in March to head the new division alongside fellow Inflection AI cofounder Karén Simonyan.
Suleyman said the ties between Microsoft and OpenAI aren't unique, but rather similar to other company relationships across the industry.
"I think one of the things people don't realize is that all the companies actually have deep partnerships with other companies," he said. "I mean, we have a deep relationship with Amazon, believe it or not, on a lot of fronts."