Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is doubling down on its commitment to advancing artificial intelligence (AI), even going so far as to make a chief rival’s software available to Microsoft Azure customers.
The company that spent billions investing in ChatGPT-developer Open AI announced at its Inspire conference that Meta’s new large language model, named Llama 2, will be available on the Azure cloud computing service.
“Meta and Microsoft share a commitment to democratizing AI and its benefits and we are excited that Meta is taking an open approach with Llama 2,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We offer developers choice in the types of models they build on, supporting open and frontier models and are thrilled to be Meta’s preferred partner as they release their new version of Llama 2 to commercial customers for the first time.”
Meanwhile, Meta called Microsoft its “preferred partner” for Llama 2 in a blog post on Tuesday. The software is available for free for companies and researchers, with a Meta spokesperson adding that the company is “not focused on monetization for Llama 2,” according to reports.
However, companies that want to use the software with a commercial license would need to pay Microsoft for the enterprise hosting capabilities.
Meta stands to benefit down the line, as the Llama 2 large language model learns from an expanded user and developer base.
For Microsoft, the deal represents throwing support behind a large language model other than ChatGPT.
Shares of Microsoft added 4% Tuesday and Meta stock gained 0.5%.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
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