Microsoft relaxes the information center on OpenAI in the middle of a joint venture of 500 billion dollars
By Stephen Nellis and Crystal Hu
(Reuters) – Microsoft ( MSFT ) said on Tuesday that it will extend some of its deal with OpenAI after the ChatGPT creator announced it was partnering with Oracle ( ORCL ) and Japan’s SoftBank Group to build up to $500 billion in new AI data centers. He said he changed key terms. in the United States.
President Donald Trump convened leaders of the “Stargate” effort at the White House on Tuesday to announce the deal, designed to help the United States stay ahead of China and other rivals in the global AI race, using chips from Nvidia (NVDA).
As of 2019, Microsoft has an arrangement with OpenAI that gives the Redmond, Washington-based company exclusive rights to build new computing infrastructure for OpenAI. “OpenAI’s ability to build additional capabilities, primarily for research and training models,” Microsoft said in a blog post.
That opened the door for OpenAI to work with Oracle.
A person familiar with the deal said Stargate OpenAI is a joint venture formed as a new entity with an equity stake, management rights and operational control. It will have a separate board appointed by the founding members and the CEO himself, the person said. The venture also has other investors, including the United Arab Emirates company MGX.
Microsoft will be a “technology partner” in the new venture, along with Nvidia and Arm, but is not listed as an equity fund. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son will become the company’s board chairman, according to an OpenAI statement posted on social media X.
But Microsoft still says it has exclusive rights to provide OpenAI’s API — technology shorthand for application programming interface — which is the main way software developers and business customers buy OpenAI services. That means Oracle can’t handle OpenAI’s main source of revenue.
Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Microsoft’s statements.
Microsoft says it has “revenue sharing agreements that flow both ways” with OpenAI.
“Key elements of our partnership will remain in place through the contract period through 2030, with our access to OpenAI’s IP, our revenue sharing arrangement and our exclusive access to OpenAI’s APIs all continuing into the future,” he said.
Microsoft also said that “OpenAI recently made a major new Azure commitment that will continue to support all OpenAI products and training,” referring to Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Crystal Hu in Davos, Switzerland; Reporting by Christopher Cushing)