OpenAI Partners with Google Cloud Despite Rivalry: Is This the End of Microsoft’s Exclusive Hold on AI Infrastructure?

OpenAI in a surprise event signed a deal with Google in order to use Google Cloud to support its increasing demand for computing power. The report came from Reuters mentioning about the partnership that is totally unexpected considering that OpenAI and Google are often seen as rivals in the artificial intelligence space.

As per sources, agreement between OpenAI and Google was finalized in May after several months of discussion. This collaboration highlights the fact that how immense computing power is required to train and run advanced AI models. It is also pushing competing companies to collaborate in new ways.

To recall, OpenAI’s primary partner is Microsoft and hence the collaboration with Google signals the OpenAI’s efforts to broaden its cloud infrastructure beyond its mentioned partner.

As per analyst, “The deal … underscores the fact that the two are willing to overlook heavy competition between them to meet the massive computing demands. Ultimately, we view this as a big win for Google’s cloud unit, but … there are continued worries that ChatGPT is becoming an incrementally larger threat to Google’s search dominance”

This decision of OpenAI’s to grab a partnership deal with Google is to bring the Google Cloud into the fold and this decision doesn’t just reflect a bold move, however, it is a necessity. The computing demands behind the growing, larger, and more complex AI models have skyrocketed last three years and hence relying solely on one provider is now not an option for OpenAI. This is the main reason that OpenAI is now adopting a multi-cloud strategy in order to maintain flexibility and improve reliability. Additionally, this will also allow OpenAi to access the best tools across different platforms.

Using Google’s high-performance TPUs (Tensor Processing Units) could help OpenAI experiment beyond the limitations of traditional GPUs and prepare for AI models that are exponentially more demanding than GPT-4.

In terms of Google, this is more than just landing another high-profile client. It is again a major validation of its Cloud capabilities. This deal will also put a lot of pressure on Microsoft which has been OpenAI’s primary infrastructure partner and major investor.