Sam Altman’s announcement of having secured $500 billion in funding for building OpenAI’s datacenters had been met with open skepticism by Elon Musk, but it appears that some of his allies don’t seem to be able to reconcile themselves with the idea either.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared to throw shade on Sam Altman’s update of having secured $500 billion funding from Softbank, Oracle and others to build its AI infrastructure. In an interview, Nadella was asked whether he had doubts over OpenAI’s $500 billion amount ever materializing. “Look, all I know is I’m good for my $80 billion,” Nadella replied, referring to the $80 billion investment that Microsoft had planned for its AI initiatives.
Musk, who had previously attacked Sam Altman for saying that these companies don’t have the $500 billion to fund OpenAI’s infrastrcture, took a different approach with Nadella’s statement. “On the other hand, Satya definitely has the money,” he posted on X.
But the kicker was that Satya Nadella — which is the biggest investor in OpenAI — replied. “And all this money is not about hyping AI, but is about building useful things for the real world!” he said with a laughing emoji, to which Musk replied with a laughing emoji as well.
This could be construed as Nadella throwing OpenAI and Sam Altman under the bus — by saying that his $80 billion was not about hyping AI but for building useful things, Nadella seemed to be implying that OpenAI’s $500 billion announcement was mere hype, and seemed to agree with Elon Musk that they didn’t really have the $500 billion available to invest. The laughing emojis — shared both by Nadella and Musk — seemed to drive home the point further.
This is quite a turnaround from 2019, when Microsoft had become the biggest investor in OpenAI after putting $1 billion into the company. Since then, Microsoft has put in even more money into OpenAI, and currently holds 49 percent of its equity. Until two days ago, Microsoft was the sole provider of compute infrastructure for OpenAI, a deal which it softened to a “right of first refusal” to enable OpenAI to get $500 billion from Softbank, Oracle and NVIDIA to build its infrastructure.
But with Nadella now himself hinting that OpenAI’s $500 billion announcement was more for hype than for the actually building products, it appears that cracks might be developing in Microsoft and OpenAI’s relationship. And with Satya Nadella — someone who owns 49 percent of OpenAI — seemingly siding with Musk on the $500 billion fundraise, Sam Altman might be feeling a bit alienated in these AI wars.