Microsoft is literally taking a page out of the OpenAI playbook. Bloomberg first reported that the tech giant plans to leverage its partners’ custom chip development to shore up its own struggling semiconductor business, a move that looks increasingly likely given Microsoft’s lackluster performance compared to rivals like Google and Amazon.
The arrangement is simple. OpenAI is working with Broadcom to design the AI chip, and Microsoft has full access to its innovations. “They innovate at the system level as well, so we have access to all of that,” CEO Satya Nadella explained in a newly published interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel about plans to take OpenAI’s design and extend it for Microsoft’s own purposes.
Under the revised partnership agreement, Microsoft secured intellectual property rights to OpenAI’s chip designs while maintaining access to the company’s AI models through 2032. OpenAI consumer hardware. ChatGPT manufacturers probably want to develop and sell their own.
This collaboration highlights a broader reality in the technology industry that building cutting-edge AI chips is extremely difficult and expensive. Rather than continuing to fight alone, Microsoft is betting that OpenAI’s expertise and smartly structured contracts can accelerate its ambitions.
