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Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

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Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#231
post #208

I wonder if OpenAI will make more revenue than Minecraft over the next decade.

If and when they fine tune Dall-E and Chat GPT and find a suitable monetization scheme - absolutely.

They have no need for finetuning. they give you API access and charge per token generated and you can finetune on your own. The monetization scheme already exists. e.g. GPT-3.

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode, Minecraft, Teams. They have renewed their grip on several audiences.

I guess two out of three ain't bad. Minecraft and Code are both awesome, but Teams is probably the most annoying piece of software on my work laptop.

Teams is software that makes laptop fans sing, how can you be against that?

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#234
post #181

I expect this deal to be a must for Microsoft. OpenAI is probably very happy to raise the stakes as much as possible. So we will see how many billions Microsoft ends up paying for this. Still, is there a world in which we look back 10 years from now and think that we were overvaluing the impact of AI? (For example, this did happen with tablets, when people thought that the iPad would replace "computers"...)

Nah -- this sounds like Google buying YouTube or Android for billions while they were in their infancy but had proven tech. People did say at the time Google overpaid but they were some of the wisest investments Google ever made. I hope Microsoft don't buy them and OpenAI just becomes another FANG.

Google bought Deepmind for 2% of openai's current valuation before openai existed.

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#235
post #192

$10 Bilion for the non-ruling half of OpenAI? Impresssive. As a reference Microsoft paid $7.2 billion for the entire handset business of Nokia (which was floundering at the time, but still).

What's the path to monetization for Microsoft for OpenAI/ChatGPT?

The recent announcement of ChatGPT being used in Bing. Also wouldn't surprise me if GitHub Copilot moves to OpenAI, if it isn't already. The return of Clippy?

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#236
post #121

Does anybody else have the feeling "Microsoft is back"? With GitHub and OpenAI the have put their finger on two pretty significant new projects. What new things has Google come up with over the last 5 years?

if acquiring companies means you "are back" what was the value anyways? windows 11 seems like an intentional disaster where basif features are misaing because microsoft decided you didnt need to them. office seems to be getting worse and is now solely about thay subscription money. and many of microsofts acquisitions just languish slowly - linkedin etc. google can buy conpanies too. meh.

> if acquiring companies means you "are back" what was the value anyways?

In fairness, this is true of most major companies in the past 20 years. Apple acquired PA Semi to build their A-Series chips, Google just straight up bought the Android OS. Facebook bought Oculus and renamed itself, Tesla's first 3 years of ASDS was just Mobileye's tech and Tesla overselling it's abilities.

Windows 11 being a 'disaster' is a vast overstatement of issues. Consumers widely seem to be fine with it by the numbers, and Microsoft found more ways to generate profits. Sadly they are a business. Adding ChatGPT to windows would wildly change the context of the product and would probably be a massive blow to Apple as ChatGPT is a real "I want that" feature if they market it to wide audiences, at the level of the first laser printer or such. A product where you don't have to know anything about how it works to know that the output is wanted.

Linkedin makes money, provides direct information of practices, and allows them to own a quiet corner of the majority of US user's life. Just owning and sitting on it is a great investment, even if you forget the whole LinkedIn learning/Certs thing they are doing to own the education corner.

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#237
post #181

I expect this deal to be a must for Microsoft. OpenAI is probably very happy to raise the stakes as much as possible. So we will see how many billions Microsoft ends up paying for this. Still, is there a world in which we look back 10 years from now and think that we were overvaluing the impact of AI? (For example, this did happen with tablets, when people thought that the iPad would replace "computers"...)

Nah -- this sounds like Google buying YouTube or Android for billions while they were in their infancy but had proven tech. People did say at the time Google overpaid but they were some of the wisest investments Google ever made. I hope Microsoft don't buy them and OpenAI just becomes another FANG.

Or like when Microsoft invested $240M into Facebook back in 2007, which is one of the all time greatest corporate investments. Even after the massive correction, they still have a 22x return on the investment.

https://www.vox.com/2017/10/23/16412108/facebook-microsoft-2...

I wonder if they have cashed out their investment?

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#238

Question to AI/ML folks : Is there no comparable open source model? Is the future going to be controlled by big corporations who own the models themselves? If models are so computationally intensive to produce does it mean than the more computational power a company has the better its models will be?

RE: Open Source models, there is the AnthropicAI model making the rounds on Twitter[1] and Stability.ai (makers of Stable Diffusion) are working on one [2].

If we use recent history as an example, OpenAI announced DALL-E in Jan 5, 2021 [3], announced v2 and a waitlist for public use in July 20, 2022, and Stable Diffusion shipped an open source model on August 22, 2022 [4] using ~$600K of compute (at retail prices on AWS) [5].

I don't see how it's likely that any company can acquire a durable technology moat here. There are scale barriers to entry, but even VC sized funding can overcome that.

[1] https://twitter.com/goodside/status/1611556749726605312

[2] https://humanloop.com/blog/stability-ai-partnership

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DALL-E

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion

[5] https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1563870674111832066?lan...

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#239
post #192

$10 Bilion for the non-ruling half of OpenAI? Impresssive. As a reference Microsoft paid $7.2 billion for the entire handset business of Nokia (which was floundering at the time, but still).

What's the path to monetization for Microsoft for OpenAI/ChatGPT?

I would pay a monthly subscription for it.

Re: Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

#240
post #169

I notice a few people lamenting that OpenAI will no longer be... open. But I have to wonder, in what sense is OpenAI open today ? In 2019, OpenAI transitioned from non-profit to for-profit. At that time, Microsoft invested US$1 billion into the company. OpenAI then announced its intention to commercially license its technologies.

Still more open than Google, Microsoft or DeepMind

Are we forgetting TensorFlow? It played a part in starting this whole AI revolution.
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