OpenAI and Microsoft Are Avoiding a Messy Breakup: Dave Lee

By far the most finicky part of OpenAI’s necessary conversion into a for-profit company was reconciling its convoluted partnership with Microsoft Corp. With the year-end deadline fast approaching, they have made a deal both sides can live with for now, though it sets out the timeline for an eventual split.

Microsoft’s shrewd $13.75 billion investment in 2019 required OpenAI to work with Microsoft and its Azure cloud platform — an arrangement that sent Microsoft’s valuation soaring. But as the artificial-intelligence race intensified, things became untenable: OpenAI needed more computing power than Microsoft was able to build, and Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief executive officer, ...