Tech firm Microsoft and synthetic intelligence agency OpenAI are reportedly in talks to renegotiate the funding deal between the AI agency and Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s largest monetary backer.
In accordance with a report from the Monetary Occasions, Microsoft could hand over a portion of its fairness in OpenAI for continued entry to the AI firm’s merchandise and fashions past 2030, when a few of the authentic phrases of a deal signed between the 2 corporations expire.
Microsoft has invested over $13 billion into OpenAI since 2019, when it first acquired an curiosity within the synthetic intelligence agency.
OpenAI is trying to restructure the corporate to shift its focus to profit-making. Nevertheless, these plans have met with pushback from co-founders like Elon Musk and early buyers.
The deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is essential to OpenAI’s restructuring and the way forward for the US-based AI startup firm. Advancing synthetic intelligence has additionally turn out to be a key policy objective for global leaders because the AI arms race heats up.
Associated: OpenAI to stay nonprofit, scrap proposed overhaul
OpenAI faces staunch pushback towards for-profit shift
OpenAI was based as a non-profit entity in 2015 by businessman Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur Sam Altman, and AI researcher Ilya Sutskever.
Nevertheless, in 2024, the corporate started mulling a company restructuring that will convert the corporate from a non-profit entity to a for-profit company.
Elon Musk has been one of many biggest critics of the plan, calling into query the legality of the proposed shift in a November 2024 authorized filing.
The tech billionaire additionally blasted the corporate’s concentrate on closed-source software program improvement, which he stated was not the unique goal of OpenAI.
“OpenAI was truly began and was meant to be open supply. I named it ‘OpenAI’ after open supply, now it’s, in actual fact, closed supply. It must be renamed tremendous closed supply AI for max revenue AI,” Musk told an viewers on the New York Occasions DealBook Summit.
In February 2025, a gaggle of buyers led by Musk submitted a $97.4 billion bid to take over OpenAI. Nevertheless, the deal was flatly rejected by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Extra just lately, on Could 5, OpenAI announced it was abandoning its shift to a purely for-profit mannequin and is selecting to shift to a public profit company — a profit-driven construction with authorized obligations to meet social or public items targets — managed by a non-profit entity.
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