Microsoft was once the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models. No longer.
Coinciding with the announcement of Stargate, OpenAI’s massive new AI infrastructure deal with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, Microsoft says it has signed a new agreement with OpenAI that gives it “right of first refusal” on new OpenAI cloud computing capacity. That means that, going forward, Microsoft gets first choice over whether to host OpenAI’s AI workloads in the cloud — but if Microsoft can’t meet its needs, OpenAI can go to a rival cloud provider.
“OpenAI recently made a new, large Azure commitment that will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”
OpenAI has blamed a lack of available compute for delaying its products, and compute capacity has reportedly become a source of tension between the AI company and Microsoft, its close collaborator and major investor. In June, Microsoft, under shareholder pressure, permitted OpenAI to ink a deal with Oracle for additional capacity.
In the blost post, Microsoft reiterated that “key elements” of its longstanding partnership with OpenAI remain in place through 2030, including its access to OpenAI’s IP, revenue sharing arrangements, and exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs.
That assumes, of course, that OpenAI doesn’t achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) under the two companies’ agreed-upon definition before then. When OpenAI develops AI systems that can generate at least $100 billion in profits, Microsoft will lose access to the company’s technology, according to a reported agreement between the firms.
OpenAI is said to be considering nullifying the agreement in a possible bid to secure more Microsoft funding.
“The OpenAI API is exclusive to Azure, runs on Azure and is also available through the Azure OpenAI Service,” the blog post reads. “This agreement means customers benefit from having access to leading models on Microsoft platforms and direct from OpenAI.”
We’ve reached out to OpenAI and Microsoft for more information and will update this post if we hear back.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
With data centers expected to consume as much as 12% of electricity in the U.S. by 2028, it’s no surprise that tech companies are looking for power no matter the source, whether it be nuclear, renewables, or something else entirely. But solar produces a very different type of electric current from a nuclear plant, and integrating various power sources can be challenging.
“We’ve got about 90 gigawatts [of data centers] globally in 2023, and that’s going to increase to over 185 gigawatts by 2028, so it’s only just around the corner,” Gary Lawrence, CEO of Amperesand, told TechCrunch.
Today’s equipment, the transformers that convert power from one format to another, are up to the task, but Amperesand is betting that its technology can do it better and more efficiently.
At its core, Amperesand’s technology replaces the iron cores that define old transformers with silicon carbide. Existing transformers follow the same basic design that has worked well for over a century, but they have their shortcomings. For one, they aren’t good at regulating surges and dips in voltage or frequency. Plus, they have to be tailored to the specific format of electricity they’re looking to transform.
Solid-state transformers made with silicon carbide promise to change that. “The solid-state transformer platform is multi-port by design, it’s modular,” said Brian Dow, Amperesand’s new chief product officer.
“We can make different AC phases, AC to AC, AC to DC. You can natively integrate DC sources like photovoltaic [solar] and batteries. You can integrate with turbines, small modular reactors. And you can basically seamlessly transition between them, so if the grid has an issue, you can back up but also you can come back online.”
Amperesand is in the process of raising a Series A round after it landed a $12.5 million seed round last year, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. “We’ve just kicked off a Series A, and it’s moving really quickly,” said Phil Inagaki, managing partner at Temasek’s Xora Innovations. The company is targeting EV charging and grid applications in addition to data centers, and the solid-state nature of the technology makes it easier to control with software. It demonstrated a 6 megawatt transformer last year.
Xora incubated Amperesand, and Inagaki led the company through its initial formation. Recently, with some funding and a firm strategy in place, he handed the reins to a new leadership team, including Lawrence, Dow, and Tommy Joyner, the company’s new chief technology officer.
The Singapore-based startup is also in the process of opening an office here in the U.S. to be closer to the massive market and to tap local talent. Dow and Joyner, for example, both did stints at Tesla and Generac.
“The U.S. is still where there’s amazing talent that we can capture,” Inagaki said. “We have some in Singapore, but we won’t be able to scale that quickly. So definitely, that talent angle was a big factor.”
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is investigating a data breach after a well-known hacker claimed to have stolen sensitive information from the company.
The hacker, who uses the alias “IntelBroker,” claims to have stolen a trove of data from HPE, the enterprise IT division of hardware giant HP.
In a post on a popular cybercrime forum on January 16, seen by TechCrunch, IntelBroker said the stolen data includes product source code, private GitHub repositories, as well as access keys to several HPE services, including APIs and platforms like WePay, GitHub and GitLab.
The hacker, who has previously claimed to have breached technology giants including AMD, Cisco and Nokia, also says they accessed HPE user data, including personally identifiable information related to past deliveries.
In a statement to TechCrunch, HPE spokesperson Laura von Pentz said, “HPE became aware on January 16 of claims being made by a group called IntelBroker that it was in possession of information belonging to HPE. HPE immediately activated our cyber response protocols, disabled related credentials, and launched an investigation to evaluate the validity of the claims.
“There is no operational impact to our business at this time, nor evidence that customer information is involved.”
When asked by TechCrunch, HPE declined to say how it was compromised. IntelBroker, who claims to be selling the data allegedly stolen from HPE, did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions.
Almost exactly a year ago, HPE confirmed that Midnight Blizzard, a Russia-linked hacking group, had compromised its cloud-based email environment. The company said hackers had “accessed and exfiltrated data” from a “small percentage” of mailboxes after “leveraging a compromised account to access internal HPE email boxes”
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
The AI startup market is sprawling, from companies looking to develop new chips, to those using AI to build robots, to others looking to use AI to create niche solutions for industry-specific workflows. There are a lot of potential areas for venture capitalists to invest in, but there are clearly a few subsectors they are more excited about than others.
TechCrunch recently surveyed 20 VCs who invest in startups looking to sell to enterprises about their predictions for 2025.
Mark Rostick, a vice president and senior managing director at Intel Capital, told TechCrunch that now that the large foundational models have been established — at least in his opinion — the next interesting area to invest in is AI solutions for specific tasks.
“I find models that excel at specific functions particularly intriguing, especially when combined with agents built on top of them,” Rostick said. “As AI adoption accelerates, application-focused companies will take center stage, as CEOs increasingly seek ways to leverage AI in specific areas that deliver tangible, transformative impact.”
This was echoed by Mike Hayes, a managing director at Insight Partners. He added that he’ll be looking to back companies building products that use AI to reduce business friction.
“I look for solutions that solve unique, orthogonal challenges for enterprises — areas where traditional solutions have fallen short,” Hayes said. “This includes vertical and persona-specific workflows reimagined with GenAI or agentic automation and security innovations that do not only identify and alert, but also remediate.”
VCs interested in going after companies that target specific enterprise use cases will have to make sure these startup solutions are in fact companies, as opposed to just features. Otherwise, we could see a repeat of the SaaS boom in 2021, when a lot of companies that were really just one-note features raised oodles of venture capital before being left behind in favor of companies that offered platform solutions when enterprise budgets contracted in 2023.
There are of course tasks that are important enough to warrant a single-feature solution. For SaaS, we overwhelmingly heard that enterprises would still pay for companies offering specific cybersecurity solutions. For AI, what point solutions enterprises will be willing to pay for isn’t clear yet. Ed Sim, the founder and general partner at Boldstart Ventures, acknowledged this challenge.
“The trick is skating to where the puck will be and also thinking through is this a feature, or a product, or a business,” Sim said.
Another area VCs are excited about is reliability and resiliency. Jason Mendel, an investor at Battery Ventures, said that he’s looking to invest in companies in the observability and reliability space. Liran Grinberg, the co-founder and managing partner at Team8, also has his sights set on what he calls “enterprise resilience.”
“The Crowdstrike software update incident demonstrated how fragile our digital world is, not only due to cyber attackers but also just mistakes,” Grinberg said. “We need more resilient, anti-fragile digital infrastructure by design.”
AI infrastructure will also remain a hot area of investment in 2025. VCs cited that with the advancements regarding AI agents, they are looking into the infrastructure needed for enterprises to adopt the tech in addition to companies that can help figure out pricing for AI agents too.
“It’s still very early innings here, and I believe that momentum for AI infrastructure will continue into 2025, particularly as agentic frameworks proliferate, new model paradigms (including reasoning) develop, edge AI advances, and UI/UX of AI applications evolve (including computer use),” Janelle Teng, a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners, said.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch