🤝 Microsoft and OpenAI are negotiating!
Microsoft $MSFT and OpenAI are rethinking the basics of their partnership. The reason for this is to prepare OpenAI for a possible stock market listing (IPO). This major move would transform not only the company itself, but the entire AI industry.
🔍 What is it about:
Microsoft has invested over $13 billionin OpenAI, but is willing to reduce its stake in exchange for guaranteed access to OpenAI models beyond 2030.
Microsoft'srevenue share is expected to decrease from 20 % to 10 %which should open up space for other investors.
OpenAI wants to legally change its structure to a so-called "OpenAI". public benefit corporation, a company with the aim of combining profit with public benefit.
💡 Pro Microsoft that means giving up some ownership but benefiting more from integration AI into products like Azure, Copilot or Office 365. So instead of a share of revenue, you Microsoft is buying the future of technology.
⚙️ OpenAI between non-profit origins and a billion-dollar market:
Samuel Altman's company was founded as a nonprofit research initiative. Today it has a market valuation of over $260 billion and an ambition to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) - systems capable of surpassing human ability and knowledge.
However, each side wants the most benefits for itself, and so tensions arise:
Microsoft wants share, influence and exclusivity in exchange for its investment.
OpenAI seeks to expand, raise more capital and get rid of over-dependence on one partner.
Names like SoftBank, Oracle $ORCLare getting involved. and Project "Stargate", to provide OpenAI with its own computing infrastructure independent of Microsoft.
These negotiations are not just about the legal structure of the partnership. In my view, it is largely about who will drive the future of generative AIand who will fund it, and who will benefit most from it. If OpenAI actually goes public, it will be one of the most important technology IPO of the decade.
What is your opinion on the current situation? Would you include OpenAI shares in your portfolio?
If the IPO was OpenAI, that would be awfully interesting, but that's probably a ways off.
I've read that the company will now be laying off about 3% of the staff, which might help them.
This can be quite a problem for Microsoft and may not be that beneficial to them anymore.