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(Original title: Microsoft and Apple have successively given up their seats on the OpenAI board of directors, and the "cat and mouse" game under the antitrust crackdown is being staged)

appleexistOpenAIBefore I could even get comfortable in my seat as board observer, new developments took place.

Last week, the outside world was still discussing whether Apple's participation in the OpenAI board of directors would makeMicrosoftIts status became delicate. A week later, Microsoft and Apple announced that they would give up their observer seats on OpenAI’s board of directors, leaving the onlookers confused.

Analysts say that Microsoft and Apple's withdrawal from the OpenAI board is a "sacrifice to save the king" in a tightening regulatory environment. Cori Crider, director of the law firm Foxglove, said that this move is just "another chess move on the chessboard" and that the tech giants are working withAntitrustInstitutions play a game of cat and mouse.

However, even so, the industry still believes that this cannot dispel the antitrust concerns of regulators, and this does not mean that the two companies are "decoupled" from OpenAI. It is reported that after Microsoft and Apple withdraw from the board of directors, OpenAI will regularly hold other meetings outside the board of directors with partners such as Microsoft and Apple and investors.

Image source: Daily Economic News Photo by Liu Xuemei

“Abandoning the car to save the driver” under the anti-monopoly crackdown

On July 9, local time, Microsoft announced that it would give up its observer seat on the OpenAI board. In a letter to OpenAI that day, Microsoft wrote: "Over the past eight months, we have witnessed significant progress made by the newly formed board of directors and are confident in the direction of the company. Our limited role as a board observer is no longer necessary."

Microsoft's investment in OpenAI began as early as 2019. As of now, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI.

But it was not until last year's OpenAI "forced palace incident" that Microsoft got the opportunity to join the board. In November last year, after Altman returned to serve as OpenAI CEO again and reorganized the board of directors, Microsoft took the opportunity to obtain a non-voting observer seat.

With Microsoft's withdrawal, Apple, which just joined the OpenAI board through a cooperation agreement, will not hold a similar position. There will be no observer position on the OpenAI board from now on.

Foreign media interpreted that Microsoft and Apple's withdrawal from the board of directors was a "sacrifice to save the driver" in a tightened regulatory environment. Cori Crider, director of the law firm Foxglove, said, "Microsoft's 'giving up' its seat on the OpenAI board is just another move on the chessboard. The tech giants are well aware that they are playing a cat-and-mouse game with antitrust agencies." It is reported that the law firm is participating in the regulator's further investigation into the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI.

Since ChatGPT came out, the cooperation between Microsoft and OpenAI has been a model of innovation between technology giants and startups for a long time. However, since the beginning of the year, antitrust agencies in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and other places have been eyeing the cooperation between technology giants and AI startups represented by OpenAI.

Including Microsoft, Nvidia,GoogleParent company andAmazonGiants including Apple and Facebook have invested tens of billions of dollars in the field of AI. While these investments and partnerships are a lifeline for startups, regulators worry that they could lead to the concentration of power in the hands of giants.

Image source: Meijing Chart (data source: Bloomberg)

In January this year, the U.S. Federal TradeMemberThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it was investigating Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI; in March this year, the EU’s antitrust enforcement agency, the European UnionMemberIn April, the UK regulator also stated that it would conduct a more in-depth investigation into the cooperation between Microsoft and OpenAI, Amazon and Anthropic, and in June, the FTC began investigating whether Microsoft and Inflection AI aimed to circumvent regulatory scrutiny.

But beyond the tightened regulatory environment, some analysts believe that Microsoft's emphasis on a "limited role" in the memorandum may be intended to indicate that it is not satisfied with its limited role in OpenAI.

Bloomberg technology reporter Mark Gurman previously believed that Microsoft and Apple's simultaneous attendance at board meetings could put the two tech giants in a tricky situation because they have been competitors for decades. Some board meetings may involve future AI plans between OpenAI and Microsoft, and the latter may want Apple to be excluded.

Leaving does not mean "decoupling"

Microsoft and Apple still have strategic influence on OpenAI

Although Microsoft and Apple have withdrawn from the OpenAI board of directors, it does not mean that they are no longer connected. After all, Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI, holding 49% of the shares of the latter's profit-making department, enjoying dividends from part of the latter's profits, and the right to use OpenAI's technology. Apple and OpenAI also finalized the cooperation agreement in black and white last month.

Citing an FTC official familiar with the matter, the report said the move was unlikely to address regulators' concerns.

Bloomberg also came to a similar conclusion. Bloomberg litigation analyst Justin Teresi and technology analyst Anurag Rana said that Microsoft and Apple's choice to withdraw from OpenAI's board of directors may be due to regulatory pressure, but it will not weaken the two companies' influence on OpenAI's product strategy or end the antitrust investigation, and the FTC and other regulators can see this clearly.

But in the long run, the above analysts believe that as demand increases and OpenAI faces more scrutiny worldwide, other cloud services such as Amazon AWS and even Google will become OpenAI's first choice.

As for how Microsoft and Apple will learn about the latest news from OpenAI after leaving the board of directors, the Financial Times said that OpenAI will instead hold regular meetings with partners such as Microsoft and Apple, as well as investors Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures - this is part of the plan of OpenAI's recently appointed CFO Sarah Friar.

The reporter of Daily Economic News noted that the regulatory efforts to crack down on technology giants and OpenAI are also at a time when OpenAI is going further and further on the road of profit. Since ChatGPT led the wave of generative AI, OpenAI's development path has been criticized by many people as "deviating from its original intention", including Musk, one of the company's founders.

When it was founded in 2015, OpenAI was a "non-profit organization" dedicated to developing AI in a way that would most likely benefit humanity as a whole. But in 2019, OpenAI got rid of this status and set up a for-profit subsidiary (OpenAI Global), enabling it to raise external funds including Microsoft. The company is controlled by a non-profit board of directors and promises to pay investors a portion of its profits without exceeding the upper limit in the hope of obtaining more commercial investment.

This shift also indirectly led to disputes between the non-profit and for-profit factions within the company, triggering the "palace coup" that shocked the world at OpenAI last year.

Currently, OpenAI's valuation has risen to $86 billion. In the six months from December last year to June this year, OpenAI's annualized revenue increased from $1.6 billion to $3.4 billion.

Altman told investors he was considering changing OpenAI’s structure to one that was for-profit and not controlled by a nonprofit board, similar to for-profit benefit companies like Anthropic or xAI, The Information reported last month, and that talks on the restructuring were ongoing.

reporter|Wen Qiao

edit|ProcedurePengGao Han Yi Qijiang

Proofreading|Duan Lian

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