Elon Musk-Backed Startup to Run AI Experiments on Microsoft Azure

Reuters – OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence research firm backed by Tesla Motors Inc's Elon Musk and other prominent tech executives, has signed an agreement to run most of its large-scale experiments on Microsoft Corp's flagship cloud service, Azure. OpenAI will use Azure for its experiments in deep learning and AI, and Microsoft will collaborate with the company on advancing research and creating new tools and technologies. Musk, along with venture capitalist Sam Altman, co-chairs OpenAI, whose backers apart from Musk include Amazon Web Services and tech investor Peter Thiel and LinkedIn Corp co-founder Reid Hoffman. OpenAI is an early adopter of Microsoft's Azure N-Series Virtual Machines service, which will be generally available from December. These cloud-computing services, which are powered by Nvidia Corp graphics chips, are designed for the most intensive computing workloads, including deep learning and simulations.