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Are Microsoft and OpenAI friends or foes?

August 06, 2024
Scott Nover
a cell phone sitting on top of a laptop computer
Photo by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash
In Microsoft’s latest annual report, it listed its competitors. Among them, you’ll find the usual suspects: Apple and Google’s operating systems compete with Windows; Slack and Zoom compete with Office; and Nintendo and Sony compete with Xbox. But on the artificial intelligence and search engine front, the company listed a curious name: OpenAI. It’s curious because Microsoft has poured $13 billion into OpenAI and until recently held a nonvoting seat on the ChatGPT maker’s board.

The move comes amid two notable currents: First, OpenAI recently announced a search engine product called SearchGPT, though it’s still a prototype. That product genuinely could compete with the Bing search engine. But more importantly, antitrust regulators are sniffing around the relationship between the two companies, looking for anticompetitive behavior. Both the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission are investigating the two companies — so much that Microsoft recently ditched its OpenAI board seat.

So, are the two AI giants friends or foes? Well, it’s complicated.

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