AI Pioneers Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Join Microsoft to Advance AI Research

Recently, Sam Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, was dismissed by the OpenAI Board of Directors. Concurrently, Greg Brockman, President and co-founder of OpenAI, announced his departure on platform X, citing Altman’s departure as the basis for his decision. Today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that these two OpenAI founders and their colleagues will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.

Nadella stated: “We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success”

Recently, Microsoft introduced the much-anticipated artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Copilot in the 23H2 version of Windows 11, making it the first PC platform to offer centralized AI assistance to users. Notably, Microsoft has previously invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, utilizing NVIDIA’s latest H100 compute cards to meet the immense computational demands required for training and expanding AI. At a recent developers’ conference, Microsoft announced the launch of two custom chips designed by its chip laboratory – the Azure Maia 100 AI Accelerator and the Azure Cobalt 100 Processor. These are intended to adapt its developed large language models (LLMs) more efficiently and cost-effectively, meeting future computational needs. This move also signifies a long-term strategy to reduce dependency on NVIDIA, avoiding potential bottlenecks and bolstering AI initiatives.