Microsoft’s $1B in OpenAI

Microsoft and OpenAI signed a deal where Microsoft will invest $1 billion in OpenAI’s business. OpenAI will use the funds to buy computing power from Microsoft. Running the algorithms needed to develop new AI technologies requires rapidly growing amounts of energy. This is the largest deal in the current inflection point where we’re getting diminishing returns on Moore’s Law. Computing power isn’t doubling every two years. Even if it did, that’s no longer enough to fulfill the computing needs of machine learning, deep learning and other artificial intelligence technologies.

What’s interesting about this is that of the three largest cloud computer providers, Microsoft uses the most traditional energy sources – natural gas, coal, and nuclear. The company’s renewable energy costs make up 17 percent of its usage. Compare that with 56 percent at Google.