Microsoft’s plan to fix its chip problem is, partly, to let OpenAI do the heavy lifting

Microsoft is literally taking a page from OpenAI’s playbook. Bloomberg first reported that the tech giant plans to use its partner’s custom chip development to bolster its own struggling semiconductor efforts, a move that looks increasingly pragmatic given Microsoft’s lackluster performance compared to rivals like Google and Amazon.

The arrangement is simple: OpenAI designs AI chips with Broadcom and Microsoft gets full access to the innovations. “Because they innovate even at the system level, we get access to everything,” CEO Satya Nadella explains newly published interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, describing plans to adopt OpenAI’s designs and then extend them for Microsoft’s own purposes.

Under a revised partnership agreement, Microsoft secured the intellectual property rights to OpenAI’s chip designs, while retaining access to the company’s AI models until 2032. The only exception? OpenAI’s consumer hardware, which the ChatGPT maker probably wants to develop and sell independently.

The collaboration underlines a broader reality in technology: building advanced AI chips is brutally difficult and expensive. Rather than continue to struggle alone, Microsoft is betting that OpenAI’s expertise – plus a smartly structured contract – can accelerate its own ambitions.