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Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella speaks to attendees at Microsoft’s Build conference in Seattle on May 23, 2023.

Dan DeLong | Microsoft

If there’s one company that has popularized artificial intelligence in the past year, it’s the small but richly funded startup OpenAI, the entity behind viral chatbot ChatGPT.

This week at its Build conference for software developers, Microsoft made extensive use of its collaboration with the startup, in which it’s invested billions.

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Front and center on Tuesday, the first day of the show, was a onstage conversation between Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s co-founder and president, and Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s technology chief and the person credited with building the unusually close relationship between the two companies.

“You heard it from Greg,” Scott told the crowd assembled at the Seattle Convention Center near the end of the talk. “You all are the ones who are going to make AI great.”

Toward that end, Microsoft announced a slew of products for developers that draw on OpenAI’s technology:

  • There are new Azure cloud tools for customized text summarization.
  • A forthcoming chatbot promises to help developers work with data and prepare it for analysis.
  • Developers will be able to build plug-ins that work inside of ChatGPT and the chatbots inside Microsoft’s own products, including one that will debut in Windows next month.
  • Developers who receive coding suggestions through the GitHub Copilot feature will gain access to a chatbot inside of the Windows Terminal command-line program.

Generative AI will change software forever, says Nadella

OpenAI released ChatGPT to the broad world in November, sparking lots of interest from consumers. Shortly thereafter, companies such as Atlassian, Morgan Stanley and Salesforce rushed to show off integrations of OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, which powers the chatbot. GPT-4 and alternatives from the likes of Amazon and Google have been trained on extensive internet data sets and have become capable of spitting out chunks of natural-sounding text.

The technology is a popular form of what has come to be called generative AI, which can take human input and respond with a computer-generated output.

“Every layer of the software stack is going to be changed forever and no better place to start than the actual developer stack,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during his Build keynote address on Tuesday. “We as developers, how do we build is fundamentally changing.”

It’s crucial for third-party developers to enrich Microsoft’s own software properties, such as the Microsoft 365 productivity software bundle. Such work might help Microsoft’s Teams communication app, for example, to become a more obvious hub for an increasingly wide selection of processes and tasks that companies need to carry out. That can make companies less likely to switch to alternatives such as Google Workspace.

Microsoft highlighted dozens of plug-in developers on Tuesday, including Adobe, Asana, Canva, Cloudflare, Redfin, Spotify and TripAdvisor. A demonstration showed the Windows chatbot turning on a Spotify playlist, creating a company logo with Adobe Express and sending the logo to a person’s colleagues over Teams in response to a series of typed messages.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, and Kevin Scott, Microsoft chief technology officer, speak onstage at Microsoft’s Build conference in Seattle on May 23, 2023.

Dan DeLong | Microsoft

At the same time, Nadella has pushed for Microsoft to incorporate GPT-4 directly into Teams and older Microsoft products, such as the Bing search engine, often resulting in bots branded with the name Copilot. The Copilot term emphasizes collaboration with people, in contrast with (for example) the Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system for Tesla vehicles.

“We are adding Copilot into everything,” Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and AI group, told CNBC in an interview last week. “It’s less of a top-down mandate, although we’re certainly pushing top-down. I think it’s something where we’ve actually evangelized internally and really got every team excited about. And we are building a common stack across Microsoft that the entire company is building on top of.”

Analysts responded favorably to the developer onslaught.

“The pace of MSFT’s GenAI innovation remains stunning to us,” Mizuho analysts with a buy rating on Microsoft stock wrote in a Wednesday note to clients.

Brockman hinted to developers that the cost of GPT-4, which runs in Azure, could come down.

“I think we did a 70% price reduction two years ago,” he told Scott. “Basically, this past year, we did a 90% cost reduction. A 10 times cost drop — like, that’s crazy, right? And I think we’re going to be able to do the same thing repeatedly with new models. And so GPT-4 right now, it’s expensive, it’s not fully available. But that’s one of the things that I think will change.”

WATCH: Microsoft Build 2023 unveils plugins and products that incorporate A.I.

Microsoft Build 2023 unveils plugins and products that incorporate A.I.

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.

The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. 

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Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”

The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.

Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.

“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.

Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.

Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.

The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.

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Rippling valued at $16.8 billion as HR software startup raises $450 million, says IPO not imminent

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Rippling valued at .8 billion as HR software startup raises 0 million, says IPO not imminent

From left, Parker Conrad, co-founder and CEO of Rippling, and Kleiner Perkins investor Ilya Fushman speak at the venture firm’s Fellows Founders Summit in San Francisco in September 2022.

Rippling

Human resources software startup Rippling said Friday that its valuation has swelled to $16.8 billion in its latest fundraising round.

The company raised $450 million in the round, and has committed to buying an additional $200 million worth of shares from current and previous employees. The company’s valuation is up from $13.5 billion in a round a year ago.

Rippling said there was no lead investor. Baillie Gifford, Elad Gil, Goldman Sachs Growth and others participated in the round, according to a statement from the San Francisco-based company.

With the tech IPO market mostly dormant over the past three-plus years, and President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on imports leading several companies to delay planned offerings, the most high-profile late-stage tech startups continue to tap private markets for growth capital. Rippling co-founder and CEO Parker Conrad told CNBC in an interview the the company isn’t planning for an IPO in the near future.

Conrad also highlighted a change that’s taken place in public markets in recent years, since inflation began soaring in late 2021, followed by higher interest rates. With concerns about the economy swirling, many tech companies downsized and took other steps toward generating and preserving cash.

“It does look a lot like, in order to be successful in the public markets, your growth rates have to come down so that you can be profitable,” said Conrad, who avoided enacting layoffs. “And so for us, that sort of pushes things out until the company looks profitable and probably slower growing, right?”

At Rippling, annual revenue growth is well over 30%, Conrad said, though he didn’t provide an updated sales figure. The information reported last year that Rippling doubled annual recurring revenue to over $350 million by the end of 2023 from a year prior.

Given the pace of expansion, Conrad said he isn’t fixated on profits at the moment at Rippling, which ranked 14th on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list.

Rippling offers payroll services, device management and corporate credit cards, among other products. Competitors include ADP, Paychex, Paycom Software and Paylocity.

There’s also privately held Deel, which Rippling sued in March for allegedly deploying a spy who collected confidential information. Conrad suggested that the publicity surrounding the case may be boosting business.

“I think it’s too early to say, looking at the data, how all of this is going to evolve from a market perspective, but certainly we see some companies that have said, ‘Hey, we’re talking to Rippling because of this,'” Conrad said.

WATCH: The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann

The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark's Rick Heitzmann

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Fortnite applies to launch on Apple’s App Store after Epic Games court win

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Fortnite applies to launch on Apple's App Store after Epic Games court win

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Epic Games said on Friday that it submitted Fortnite to Apple’s App Store, the month after a judge ruled in favor of the game maker in a contempt ruling.

Fortnite was booted from iPhones and Apple’s App Store in 2020, after Epic Games updated its software to link out to the company’s website and avoid Apple’s commissions. The move drew Apple’s anger, and kicked off a legal battle that has lasted for years.

Last month’s ruling, a victory for Epic Games, said that Apple was not allowed to charge a commission on link-outs or dictate if the links look like buttons, paving the way for Fortnite’s return.

Apple could still reject Fortnite’s submission. An Apple representative didn’t respond to a request for comment. Apple is appealing last month’s contempt ruling.

The announcement by Epic Games is the latest salvo in the battle between it and Apple, which has taken place in courts and with regulators around the world since 2020. Epic Games also sued Google, which operates the Play Store for Android phones.

Last month’s ruling has already shifted the economics of app development for iPhones.

Apple takes between 15% and 30% of purchases made using its in-app payment system. Linking to the web avoids those fees. Apple briefly allowed link-outs under its system but would charge a 27% commission, before last month’s ruling.

Developers including Amazon and Spotify have already updated their apps to avoid Apple’s commissions and direct customers to their own websites for payment.

Before last month, Amazon’s Kindle app told users they could not purchase a book in the iPhone app. After a recent update, the app now shows an orange “Get Book” button that links to Amazon’s website.

Fortnite has been available for iPhones in Europe since last year, through Epic Games’ store. Third-party app stores are allowed in Europe under the Digital Markets Act. Users have also been able to play Fortnite on iPhones and iPad through cloud gaming services.

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