Microsoft CEO reveals one decision Bill Gates warned him 'would be like setting $1B on fire'
They had no idea if it would pay off
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has revealed a key piece of advice founder Bill Gates gave him, that he certainly did not listen to.
The tech giant has been making headlines recently, though not all of it has been positive with the company facing a lawsuit for allegedly 'misleading' 2.7 million customers. At the same time, users have praised the AI CEO after he drew a clear line announcing that Microsoft won't follow OpenAI's approach of allowing sexual content on its platforms.
But now, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is reflecting on one of the company's riskiest bets that even Bill Gates thought was essentially as good as lighting money on fire.
Back in 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, less than four years after the AI research lab was founded.
Advert
Since then, the company has poured over $13 billion into the ChatGPT maker, an investment that has transformed both companies and reshaped the entire tech industry.
But getting that first billion-dollar check approved wasn't as simple as Nadella deciding to write it, he revealed in an interview with 'TPBN,' a tech-focused YouTube show.
"Even at Microsoft, you kind of got to have to get a board approval to just go throw a billion dollars out there," Nadella said. "But I must say it was not that hard to convince anyone that this is an important area and it's going to be risky."
He added: "In retrospect, who would have thought? I didn't put in a billion dollars saying, 'Oh yeah, this is going to be a hundred bagger.'"
However, Microsoft's founder and former CEO Bill Gates was wary when Nadella wanted to initially invest in OpenAI.
"Remember this was a nonprofit, and I think Bill even said, 'Yeah, you're going to burn this billion dollars,'" Nadella explained.
"We kind of had a little bit of high risk tolerance, and we said we want to go and give this a shot."
Safe to say, OpenAI has come an extraordinarily long way since Microsoft took its first bet on the company in 2019.
The AI startup became a household name almost overnight in November 2022 after releasing an early demo of ChatGPT. The chatbot went viral on social media, adding a million users within just five days. Now, the platform is used by over 800 million people weekly, as OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman said.
OpenAI also announced it had completed a major restructuring.
The nonprofit arm, OpenAI Foundation, will now oversee a new public benefit corporation called OpenAI Group PBC. As part of the restructuring, Microsoft holds a 27% stake in OpenAI's for-profit business, valued at approximately $135 billion.