In a case of strange bedfellows, Amazon is reportedly spending $1B with cross-down rival Microsoft to purchase the company’s AI-powered applications.
The deal centers around the acquisition of upgraded Microsoft licenses for Windows 365.
Windows 365 includes common applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook.
These applications now have an upgrade utilizing Microsoft’s $13B investment in OpenAI and enable ChatGPT as an accelerator for common tasks.
For instance, users can have the generative AI tool write drafts of emails in Outlook, or create formulas based on requests in Excel.
Staffers using Team meetings can use the AI tool to take notes and give summaries of decisions and tasks automatically.
Microsoft believes these generative AI functions will make teams able to do more with less, improving team members’ abilities to focus on strategic tasks instead of mundane ones.
What makes this more interesting is the news that Amazon recently announced a $4B investment in OpenAI’s rival, Anthropic.
That deal will allow Anthropic to utilize Amazon’s data centers and in return will embed Anthopic’s AI tool, Claude, in various Amazon applications.
However, this has not prevented Amazon from playing both sides of the field in a sign that many large companies are still attempting to figure out how to use generative AI effectively.
Microsoft will, no doubt, see this as a huge win if the reports turn out to be accurate.
Many doubted that Microsoft’s massive $13B investment was wise, but selling $1B in upgrades to a single client should be a signal to stockholders that the future is very, very bright for the company’s AI strategy.
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