Microsoft and OpenAI’s Close Partnership Shows Signs of Fraying - The New York Times

Mr. Altman and Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer, met with executives at Apple to explore ways the three companies might work together, according to two people familiar with the meeting. That meeting eventually led Apple to agree to put ChatGPT on the iPhone earlier this year.

In June, Microsoft agreed to an exception in the contract, six people with knowledge of the change said. That allowed OpenAI to sign a roughly $10 billion computing deal with Oracle for additional computing resources

Nvidia was an important partner because it designed the computer chips that OpenAI needed to build its A.I. technologies. MGX was part of an ambitious OpenAI effort to build new computer data centers across the globe.

Part of the plan was to secure strategic investments from organizations that could bolster OpenAI's prospects in ways beyond throwing around money. Those organizations included Apple, the chipmaker Nvidia, and MGX, a tech investment firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates.

Oddly, that could be the key to getting out from under its contract with Microsoft. The contract contains a clause that says that if OpenAI builds artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — roughly speaking, a machine that matches the power of the human brain — Microsoft loses access to OpenAI's technologies.

The clause was meant to ensure that a company like Microsoft did not misuse this machine of the future, but today, OpenAI executives see it as a path to a better contract