Technology
Satya Nadella disputes Elon Musk’s claim that Microsoft controls OpenAI
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during the Microsoft Annual Shareholders Meeting at the Meydenbauer Center on November 28, 2018 in Bellevue, Washington. Microsoft recently surpassed Apple, Inc. to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said it is “factually not correct” to claim that Microsoft controls its partner OpenAI, in an excerpt of a pre-taped interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that aired Tuesday.
Nadella’s remarks came after Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also co-founded OpenAI, had claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in April that “Microsoft has a very strong say, if not directly controls, OpenAI at this point.” Musk has been a vocal critical of recent advancements in AI, and he was one of more than 27,000 people to sign an open letter in March that called on AI labs to pause development.
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“Look, while I have a lot of respect for Elon and all that he does, I’d just say that’s factually not correct,” Nadella said. “OpenAI is very grounded in their mission of being controlled by a nonprofit board. We have a noncontrolling interest in it, we have a great commercial partnership in it.”
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit. The structure changed in 2019, when two top executives published a blog post announcing the formation of a “capped-profit” entity called OpenAI LP. The current setup restricts the startup’s first investors from making more than 100 times their money, with lower returns for later investors, such as Microsoft.
Microsoft announced a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI in January, which marked the third phase of the partnership between the two companies. Microsoft has been integrating OpenAI’s technology, like GPT-4, across its products and services in the recent months.
Nadella said AI development is happening quickly, but that it is important for Microsoft to capitalize on the technology and its promise.
“If anything, I feel, yes it’s moving fast, but moving fast in the right direction,” he said. “Humans are in the loop versus being out of the loop. It’s a design choice, which, at least, we have made.”
Nadella’s full interview with Sorkin will be streamed Tuesday on NBC News Now and Peacock at 10:30 p.m. ET.