The largest shareholder of the OpenAI startup remains Microsoft Corporation, which has invested more than $13 billion in its development, and therefore can easily claim some preferences in cooperation with the creators of ChatGPT. Competitors, however, have objections. Google is asking US regulators to terminate OpenAI’s exclusive agreement with Microsoft, which allows the latter to host services for OpenAI clients on its cloud infrastructure.
Image source: Microsoft
Google’s corresponding motion became known through Reuters, which mentions it in the context of describing the details of a broader investigation being conducted by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The regulator itself turned to Google with a request about the impact of the close partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI on the market for relevant services.
Cloud players Google and Amazon would like to be able to host large OpenAI language models on their infrastructure. This would allow their customers to avoid additional costs for accessing Microsoft’s cloud resources, which currently host OpenAI models under an exclusive agreement between the latter two companies. According to the participants in the investigation, OpenAI clients may face additional costs when gaining access to this company’s services if they were not previously Microsoft cloud clients. The latter’s competitors have stressed that such costs could harm OpenAI’s clients.