OpenAI x Microsoft
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Satya Nadella on funding OpenAI
From: Satya Nadella
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2022 9:47 AM
To: Amy Hood, Jon Tinter, Mikhail Parakhin
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] deal thoughts
Overall I want us to own – the silicon, infra, foundational model IP and “know how”. Right now we are a very thin layer on top of NVIDIA and all the IP is with Open AI. And we have a P&L that will lose 4 bil next year!!! I have not seen anything like this in my 30 years in our industry. I can justify it all by saying that Open AI has smart people and NVIDIA has a lock etc. But if we are going to spend this kind of money and not have control of destiny, it makes no sense. Better to be an investor and not even take all this execution risk!
I want to spend this money. The infra and HW/Silicon work at the “system” level need to have a proprietary edge (and show up as positive GM in Cog Services). And we need to have a foundational model team that is self – sufficient at all time and has the “know how” of taking what Open AI does and productizing it. As long as we have an internal org/investment model/open AI deal terms that all compose to achieve these two goals, we can take all kinds of other risk around monetization etc.
Will be good use the P&L review to get on the same page/context here so that we can all solve for what is our best Open AI deal terms in the context of our overall AI roadmap/plan.
Thx
Satya
Sent from Mail for Windows
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Previously: 30+ documents from Musk v. Altman and Satya Nadella in the full archive
Sam Altman's group chat with Satya Nadella
November 21, 2023
10:53 a.m.
Sam Altman
can we talk soon? have a positive update, ish
Kevin Scott
Not sure about Satya, but I’m around.
4:49 p.m.
Sam Altman
emmett thinks its looking reasonably positive for the 5 member board option
Satya Nadella
Good
Satya Nadella
Any timeframe
Sam Altman
emmett is getting on a call with all of them soon
Satya Nadella
Is this Larry Summers and Belinda and you three? Is that still the plan
Sam Altman
larry yes
Sam Altman
the other still up in air
Sam Altman
would diane greene be ok with you?
Satya Nadella
No
Kevin Scott
Belinda Johnson?
Kevin Scott
Diane Green strong no
Kevin Scott
Strong strong no.
Kevin Scott
Belinda is great.
Satya Nadella
[Liked “Belinda is great.”]
Satya Nadella
[Liked “Strong strong no.”]
Satya Nadella
How about Sue Desmond-Hellmann
Sam Altman
suggesting
Satya Nadella
Ursula Burns is another name
Kevin Scott
Amy Rao
Kevin Scott
(Chair of human rights watch)
Kevin Scott
Emilie Choi (President of Coinbase)
Kevin Scott
Amy Chang
Satya Nadella
I just added Brad to this
Brad Smith
Ursula Burns
Kevin Scott
Julia Hartz
Kevin Scott
Ciporra Herman
Kevin Scott
(Former Treasurer FB@ IPO, former CFO 49’ers)
Kevin Scott
Maynard Webb
Brad Smith
Anne Sweeney, operator at ABC and Disney, on the Netflix board. Solid, thoughtful, calm.
Brad Smith
Leslie Kilgore. Former CMO at Netflix. On board still. Incredibly smart, firm, practical, while also a good listener.
Kevin Scott
Yep. Leslie was on the LI board. Very reasonable.
Kevin Scott
Jeff Weiner?
Kevin Scott
Bing Gordon?
Satya Nadella
[Liked “Jeff Weiner?”]
Satya Nadella
Bing is on Amazon board or a consultant
Kevin Scott
He’s off now.
Kevin Scott
But valid.
Kevin Scott
Have you all thought about Emmett? They already picked him and he seems sane.
Sam Altman
we have offered that earlier
Sam Altman
still happy
Satya Nadella
I really think they need Emmett for their own reputation, I did say this to Adam
Sam Altman
agreed
Satya Nadella
Maybe Bret can stress that to Adam as well if he has not already done
Kevin Scott
I can quit for six months and do it. (Ready to be downvoted by Satya on this one, and not really serious. 😄)
Satya Nadella
[Disliked “I can quit for six months and do it. (Ready to be…”]
Kevin Scott
😂
Satya Nadella
Just added Bret so that he also sees all the names
7:15 p.m.
Sam Altman
we are still waiting for a proposal
Satya Nadella
Got it.
Satya Nadella
Do you think we get this done tonight and we issue statements or we think this is tomorrow? Do you want me to ping Adam with you and Bret on it and ask?
Sam Altman
bret on with them now
Satya Nadella
[Liked “bret on with them now”]
7:54 p.m.
Sam Altman
would you do this
Sam Altman
bret, larry summers, adam
Sam Altman
as the board
Sam Altman
and me as ceo
Sam Altman
and then bret handles the investigation
Brad Smith
You would be ceo but lot on the board
Sam Altman
yes
Brad Smith
Your future would be decided by Larry Summer. He’s smart but so mercurial. I think it’s too risky a propositions
Sam Altman
id accept it given my conversations with him
Sam Altman
and where we right
Sam Altman
now
Sam Altman
it’s bullshit but i want to save this
Sam Altman
can you guys live with it?
Satya Nadella
Can I call Larry tonight?
Sam Altman
sure any time
Satya Nadella
Give me his cell number
Sam Altman
we are going to talk with larry, bret, emmett, and the board in a few mins
10:38 p.m.
Sam Altman
thank you guys for the partnership and trust. excited to get this all sorted to a long-term configuration you can really depend on
Satya Nadella
[Loved “thank you guys for the partnership and trust. exci…”]
Brad Smith
Thank you! A tough several days. Let’s build on this and regain momentum
Sam Altman
[Loved “Thank you! A tough several days. Let’s build on th…”]
Satya Nadella
Really looking forward to getting back to building….
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Further reading from Aaron Holmes for The Information: “Nadella and Scott said they didn’t want former Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene or former Amazon director Bing Gordon on the board, which Nadella testified Monday was due to conflicts between Microsoft’s cloud business and those competitors.” (May 11, 2026)
Further reading from Cade Metz and Mike Isaac for The New York Times: “Mr. Musk’s lawyers, led by the experienced litigator Steven Molo, tried to portray Mr. Nadella as an unseen influence backing Mr. Altman … Mr. Nadella called the OpenAI board’s decision to remove Mr. Altman ‘amateur hour, as far as I’m concerned.’”
Previously: “directionally very bad” (November 19, 2023)
Previously: Sam Altman texts Satya Nadella and Bret Taylor (November 19, 2023)
Previously: Microsoft CTO: Why the OpenAI board really fired Sam Altman (November 19, 2023)
Previously: 25+ documents from Musk v. Altman and Sam Altman in the full archive
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“I don’t want to be IBM and OpenAI to be Microsoft”
From: Sam Altman
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 2:01 PM
To: Satya Nadella; Kevin Scott
Subject: [EXTERNAL] two documents for tomorrow
Satya, Kevin--
Looking forward to talking tomorrow!
The first document here outlines our current thinking about how we will get to AGI. There are a few new elements since the last time we’ve talked, the most important of which is that we’ve learned how to use compute to generate new knowledge and data, which allows us to spend compute to run a self-improvement cycle, and means we value compute even more than we did last time we talked.
The second is a proposal for a deal structure we think leads to long-term (i.e. indefinitely long) alignment for both companies.
Sam
From: Satya Nadella
Sent: Thur 4/28/2022 11:55:09 PM (UTC)
To: Jon Tinter, Dave O’Hara, Michael Wetter, Keith Dolliver
Cc: Kevin Scott, Amy Hood, Chris Young
Subject: FW: [EXTERNAL] two documents for tomorrow
Attachment: OAI AGI roadmap.docx
Attachment: OAI x MSFT proposal.docx
Have not fully digested this as yet. Kevin and I meet him tomorrow.
The goal here is figure out how to continue the partnership in a more aligned way.
Here are some top of mind thoughts (Kevin should feel free to add/edit):
I don’t want to be IBM and OpenAI to be Microsoft.
Happy to keep funding the HW and also their Opex/Payout for employees. We pay for all the HW required and also their Opex for engineers and also payouts to employees at defined milestones of delivery.
In return we want full IP rights and also need to “embed” our folks across every layer of the stack so that we can be self sufficient if need came.
We take the risk of figuring out how to monetize.
Open AI takes the risk that we figure out how to build the HW.
If we can’t figure out monetization, but someone else figures out how to monetize we just sell them Azure APIs and recoup our costs (Azure Infra GM margins).
If there are no buyers or someone else wins the race, Open AI shuts down.
The biggest issue I see is all these investors. I just don’t get their incentives. I would rather have Open AI employees get money at appropriate delivery milestones for example vs these VCs. We have effectively funded 90% of their HW/Opex to date.
Please send any thoughts. Tomorrow will mostly listen and try to establish some principles that Kevin and I can use to establish for the next go around.
Thx
Sent from Mail for Windows
[Full original attachment:]
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Previously: 40+ documents from Microsoft in the full archive
Sam Altman texts Elon Musk
October 1, 2020
Sam Altman
Saw your feedback on Twitter last week. I’m happy to talk about this if you’d like, but I think there’s no way we can hold a candle to DeepMind without many billions of dollars, and MSFT still seems like the best way for us to get that with the least compromise. We gave MSFT a copy of GPT-3 to use in their own products, but we still get to retain autonomy to release our work ourselves (e.g., we can and will continue to provide API access to the most powerful language model in existence to everyone). If you’ve got any feedback about how to do better, I’d love to hear it. Thanks! Sam.
Elon Musk
Yeah, we should talk
Elon Musk
I don’t think it’s a winning approach to be (or at least appear to be) hypocritical
Elon Musk
At least change the name
Sam Altman
happy to talk whenever you’re free--agreed we should try not to appear hypocritical
Elon Musk
Sounds good. I’m in Texas and about to do a series of Starship engineering reviews, but free tonight.
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Further reading: Elon Musk on Twitter: “This does seem like the opposite of open. OpenAI is essentially captured by Microsoft.” (September 24, 2020)
Previously: Sam Altman texts Elon Musk: “i dont think openai would have happened without you—and it really fucking hurts when you publicly attack openai” (February 18, 2023)
Previously: 55+ documents from Elon Musk and Sam Altman in the full archive
Bonus: Microsoft’s investment memos for OpenAI, 2019–2024
March 7, 2019
June 10, 2019
January 11, 2023
September 9, 2024
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
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