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Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

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Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#81

Post by YetAnotherNick »

echelon wrote: post #25
strangescript wrote: post #7

I think they have realized that even if OpenAI is first, it won't last long so really its just compute at scale, which is something they already do themselves.

There is no moat in models (OpenAI). There is a moat in infra (hyperscalers, Azure, CoreWeave). There is a moat in compute platform (Nvidia, Cuda). Maybe there's a moat with good execution and product, but it isn't showing yet. We haven't seen real break out successes. (I don't think you can call ChatGPT a product. It has zero switching cost.)

What moat does Nvidia have. AMD could have ROCm perfected if they really want to. Also most of pytorch, specially those relevant to transformers runs perfectly on Apple Silicon and TPUs and probably other hardware as well.

If anyone has moat related to Gen AI, I would say it is the data(Google, Meta).

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#83

Post by notahacker »

moelf wrote: post #39
paxys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.

$20k can't get you that many PhD. Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month, effectively costs double that because of school overhead and other stuff.

Does depend on where your PhD lives and what subject their PhD is in from where, and how many hours of work you expect them to do a week, and whether you need to full-time "prompt" them to get them to function...

Would definitely rather have a single postdoc in a relevant STEM subject from somewhere like Imperial for less than half the overall cost than an LLM all in though. And I say that despite seeing the quality of the memes they produce with generative AI....

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#84

Post by BeetleB »

moelf wrote: post #39
paxys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.

$20k can't get you that many PhD. Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month, effectively costs double that because of school overhead and other stuff.

> Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month

Do they really get paid that much these days?

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#85

Post by freedomben »

barumrho wrote: post #74
echelon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moat in models (OpenAI). There is a moat in infra (hyperscalers, Azure, CoreWeave). There is a moat in compute platform (Nvidia, Cuda). Maybe there's a moat with good execution and product, but it isn't showing yet. We haven't seen real break out successes. (I don't think you can call ChatGPT a product. It has zero switching cost.)

Given xAI built its 100k gpu datacenter in a very short time, is the infra really a moat?

I'd say it is because the $ it takes to build out even a small gpu data center is still way, way more than most small cos can do. It's not an impenetrable moat, but it is pretty insulating against startups. Still have a threat from big tech, though I think that will always be true for almost everything

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#86

Post by eagerpace »

barumrho wrote: post #74
echelon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moat in models (OpenAI). There is a moat in infra (hyperscalers, Azure, CoreWeave). There is a moat in compute platform (Nvidia, Cuda). Maybe there's a moat with good execution and product, but it isn't showing yet. We haven't seen real break out successes. (I don't think you can call ChatGPT a product. It has zero switching cost.)

Given xAI built its 100k gpu datacenter in a very short time, is the infra really a moat?

I don't think the hardware is that easy to source just yet. Musk pulled some strings and redirected existing inventory and orders from his other companies, namely Tesla, to accelerate delivery.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#87

Post by thewebguyd »

rdtsc wrote: post #20

They probably saw the latest models like gpt 4.5 not being as revolutionary as expected and deepseek and others catching up.

I think Microsoft isn't buying the AGI hype from OpenAI, and wants to move to be more model agnostic, and instead do what Microsoft (thinks) it does best, and that's tooling, and enterprise products.

MS wants to push Copilot, and will be better off not being tied to OpenAI but having Copilot be model agnostic, like GH Copilot can use other models already. They are going to try and position Azure as "the" place to run your own models, etc.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#88

Post by optimalsolver »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #31

A couple of days ago it leaked that OpenAI was planning on launching new pricing for their AI Agents. $20K/mo for their PhD Level Agent, $10K/mo for their Software Developer Agent, and $2K/mo for their Knowledge Worker Agent. I found it very telling. Not because I think anyone is going to pay this, but rather because this is the type of pricing they need to actually make money. At $20 or even $200 per month, they'll…

Now that OAI has "PhD level" agents, I assume they're largely scaling back recruitment?

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#89

Post by BeetleB »

cft wrote: post #67
skinnymuch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to look at Claude Code. I pay for Cursor right now.

Claude Code is another level, because it's agentic. It iterates. Although it keeps you further from the codebase than Cursor and thus you may lose the grasp of what it generates- that's why I still use Cursor, before the manual review.

Consider Aider. Open source. Agentic as well. And you can control the context it sends (apparently not as much in Code).

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#90

Post by optimalsolver »

skinnymuch wrote: post #57
Spooky23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OpenAI is toxic. Weird corporate governmance shadiness. The Elon drama, valuations based on claims that seem like the AI version of the Uber for X hype of a decade ago (but exponentially crazier). The list goes on. Microsoft is the IBM of this century. They are conservative, and I think they’re holding back — their copilot for government launch was delayed months for lack of GPUs. They have the money to make…

IBM of this century in a good way?

IBM of the early 1940s.
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