The AGI race just got a massive new player. OpenAI's restructuring deal with Microsoft was supposed to secure the startup's future, but it may have unleashed its biggest competitor yet. Under the new terms announced Tuesday, Microsoft can now "independently pursue AGI alone or in partnership with third parties" - essentially giving the tech giant a license to hunt the same prize OpenAI is chasing, using OpenAI's own technology as ammunition.
The artificial general intelligence race was already intense, but OpenAI's latest deal with Microsoft just turned it into a free-for-all. What started as a restructuring necessity has become a strategic miscalculation that could reshape the entire AI landscape.
The urgency was real - OpenAI faced losing up to $10 billion in funding if it didn't complete its for-profit conversion by New Year's Eve. Microsoft held the keys to approval, and the negotiation that followed reveals just how much leverage the tech giant wielded.
Under the renegotiated partnership, Microsoft walked away with something unprecedented - the explicit right to develop AGI independently. "Microsoft can also now independently pursue AGI alone or in partnership with third parties," according to the deal terms. Translation: Microsoft is no longer just OpenAI's biggest investor and partner. It's now a direct competitor.
The implications are staggering. Microsoft has full intellectual property rights to all of OpenAI's research through 2030, including "confidential methods used in the development of models and systems." That means Microsoft can literally use OpenAI's own breakthroughs against it in the race to AGI. Even models intended solely for OpenAI's internal research are fair game for Microsoft's AGI pursuit.
But Microsoft isn't stopping there. The company began purchasing AI services from Anthropic last month, OpenAI's most formidable competitor. Now Microsoft can potentially combine OpenAI's IP with Anthropic's capabilities, or work with any number of other AI startups to accelerate its own AGI timeline.
