You are currently viewing Microsoft Insiders Worry the Company Has Become Just ‘IT for OpenAI’

Microsoft Insiders Worry the Company Has Become Just ‘IT for OpenAI’

Some Microsoft insiders worry the company’s AI strategy has become too focused on its partnership with OpenAI.

A few even grumble that the software giant has turned into a glorified IT department for the hot startup. These comments were part of a recent exclusive story from Business Insider in which Microsoft insiders shared candid views on the company’s AI future and its new Copilot tools.

The group at the center of this is Microsoft’s AI Platform team, run by Eric Boyd. This sits within Scott Guthrie’s Cloud + AI organization.

The AI Platform team has had many iterations. What was historically an organization with many in-house AI plays has leaned hard into the OpenAI partnership. That’s created some resentment and led to the departure of some executives who had worked on Microsoft’s homegrown AI initiatives.

Insiders say Microsoft is focused less on the internal services that previously made up Azure AI Services and more on the Azure OpenAI service.

One former executive who left as a result of the changes said products like Azure Cognitive Search, Azure AI Bot Service, and Kinect DK are practically gone. Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said these services exist in some form but either aren’t part of the Azure AI org, have been renamed, or have been bundled with other products.

“The former Azure AI is basically just tech support for OpenAI,” a former Microsoft executive said. “Eric Boyd is effectively maintaining the OpenAI service. It’s less of an innovation engine than it once was. Now it’s more IT for OpenAI. The beating heart of innovation is elsewhere.”

This person added, “It’s not very innovative, but it’s a good business strategy.” They asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

The Azure OpenAI service has hundreds of developers supporting customers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service who use OpenAI’s GPT models. Some Microsoft employees work so closely with OpenAI that they have badges to get into OpenAI’s offices, and some OpenAI employees can badge into Microsoft locations.

Shaw said that the company is optimistic about its AI tools and that customers see a positive impact even at this early stage. “We’re the ones shipping this,” Shaw added, meaning it’s Microsoft that’s bringing AI tools to the market in a meaningful way.

Are you a Microsoft employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact Ashley Stewart via email (astewart@businessinsider.com), or send a secure message from a non-work device via Signal (+1-425-344-8242).

Axel Springer, Business Insider’s parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands’ reporting.

Leave a Reply