As one of the richest people in the world, Bill Gates is known for contributing to global health through the Gates Foundation. As his biggest legacy, Microsoft is also moving in the same direction. The company is actively involved in helping the world's population overcome some of the most challenging health problems and concerns. Microsoft recently announced a new healthcare initiative known as "AI for Health," a program worth over 40 million dollars. AI for Health evolved out of the AI for Good Program, which offers general aid to the less fortunate around the world.

Microsoft will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and work with the San Francisco-based Artificial Intelligence powerhouse to create a computational platform of "unprecedented scale" to accelerate the development of advanced forms of AI. The expanded partnership gives Microsoft and its Azure cloud platform an influential ally in its competition with Google, Amazon and other rivals in the high-stakes race to develop next-generation AI platforms and technologies. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has called out AI as a pivotal area for the future of the company. OpenAI was formed in 2016 by leaders including Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO; and Sam Altman, former president of the Y Combinator startup accelerator. Musk, who has sounded the alarm over the risks of AI, said in May that he was no longer involved inOpenAI.

Microsoft is investing $1 billion in OpenAI to support us building artificial general intelligence (AGI) with widely distributed economic benefits. We're partnering to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI. We'll jointly develop new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, and Microsoft will become our exclusive cloud provider--so we'll be working hard together to further extend Microsoft Azure's capabilities in large-scale AI systems. Each year since 2012, the world has seen a new step function advance in AI capabilities. Though these advances are across very different fields like vision (2012), simple video games (2013), machine translation (2014), complex board games (2015), speech synthesis (2016), image generation (2017), robotic control (2018), and writing text (2019), they are all powered by the same approach: innovative applications of deep neural networks coupled with increasing computational power.

Microsoft today announced that it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI, the San Francisco-based AI research firm cofounded by CTO Greg Brockman, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Elon Musk, and others, with backing from luminaries like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman. In a blog post, Brockman said the investment will support the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- AI with the capacity to learn any intellectual task that a human can -- with "widely distributed" economic benefits. To this end, OpenAI intends to partner with Microsoft to jointly develop new AI technologies for the Seattle company's Azure cloud platform and will enter into an exclusivity agreement with Microsoft to "further extend" large-scale AI capabilities that "deliver on the promise of AGI." Additionally, OpenAI will license some of its technologies to Microsoft, which will commercialize them and sell them to as-yet-unnamed partners, and OpenAI will train and run AI models on Azure as it works to develop new supercomputing hardware while "adhering to principles on ethics and trust." "AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time and has the potential to help solve many of our world's most pressing challenges," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Microsoft Corp. MSFT, 1.32% is making a huge bet on artificial intelligence by sinking $1 billion into AI startup OpenAI, the companies announced Monday. Under a partnership, OpenAI will run all of its services on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and use Microsoft as its preferred partner for commercializing new AI tech. On its website, OpenAI says its mission is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work -- benefits all of humanity." Microsoft, which is currently the only U.S. company valued at more than $1 trillion, recently reported strong earnings growth driven by Azure. Shares were up 1.2% to $138.19 in recent trading Monday, compared with a flat Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, 0.07% a 0.3% gain in the S&P 500 index SPX, 0.28% and a 0.7% gain in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, 0.71%

Elon Musk announced that his company Neuralink plans to link human brains directly to computers, saying the first prototype could be implanted in a person by the end of 2020. Microsoft has agreed to invest $1 billion in and partner with research company OpenAI, co-founded by Elon Musk, to develop artificial general intelligence, a technology that could have human-level intellectual capacity. The companies said Monday that they will build a hardware and software platform of "unprecedented scale" within Microsoft's cloud service provider Azure that will train and run increasingly advanced AI models. Microsoft will also become OpenAI's preferred partner for selling its technologies and the two will jointly develop Azure's supercomputing technology. "By bringing together OpenAI's breakthrough technology with new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, our ambition is to democratize AI -- while always keeping AI safety front and center -- so everyone can benefit," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the statement.

Microsoft is investing $1 billion in OpenAI, a San Francisco-based research lab founded by Silicon Valley luminaries, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, that's dedicated to creating artificial general intelligence (AGI). The investment will make Microsoft the "exclusive" provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI, and the two companies will work together to develop new technologies. OpenAI will also license some of its tech to Microsoft to commercialize, though when this may happen and what tech will be involved has yet to be announced. OpenAI began as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 and was intended to match the high-tech R&D of companies like Google and Amazon while focusing on developing AI in a safe and democratic fashion. But earlier this year, OpenAI said it needed more money to continue this work, and it set up a new for-profit firm to seek outside investment. To attract backers, OpenAI has made outrageous promises about the potential of its technology.

Over the next year, the recipients will work on things like a nerve-sensing wearable wristband. Another project seeks to develop a wearable cap that reads a person's EEG data and communicates it to the cloud to provide seizure warnings and alerts. Other tools will rely on speech recognition, AI-powered chatbots and apps for people with vision impairment. This year's grantees include the University of California, Berkeley; Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School; Voiceitt in Israel; Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom; University of Sydney in Australia; Pison Technology of Boston; and Our Ability, of Glenmont, New York. "What stands out the most about this round of grantees is how so many of them are taking standard AI capabilities, like a chatbot or data collection, and truly revolutionizing the value of technology," Microsoft's Senior Accessibility Architect Mary Bellard said in a blog post.

Microsoft has made a strategic investment in ride-hailing and on-demand services company Grab as part of a deal that includes collaborating on big data and AI projects. Under the agreement, Singapore-based Grab will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platformAzure cloud computing service. Microsoft and Grab didn't disclose financial terms. The idea behind the tie-up is for Grab to use Microsoft's product to scale its own digital platform, which has grown beyond ride-hailing. Grab also has its own payment service and makes food deliveries.

Microsoft has made a strategic investment in ride-hailing and on-demand services company Grab as part of a deal that includes collaborating on big data and AI projects. Under the agreement, Singapore-based Grab will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platformAzure cloud computing service. Microsoft and Grab didn't disclose financial terms. The idea behind the tie-up is for Grab to use Microsoft's product to scale its own digital platform, which has grown beyond ride-hailing. Grab also has its own payment service and makes food deliveries.