We are waiting for AI competition to arrive, says Microsoft’s Nadella

Microsoft’s $10 billion investments in OpenAI with continuous funding in other AI projects has led the tech giant to overtake Apple as the most valuable company in the world. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, iterating the same sentiment, could not resist landing a gloved jab at the rest of the industry in his keynote address in Mumbai today. 

“We have the best model today … even with all the hoopla, one year after, GPT4 is better,” Nadella said at the event. “We are waiting for the competition to arrive. It will arrive, I’m sure, but the fact [is] that we have the leading LLM out there.”

Nadella’s statement came as he pitched Microsoft’s increasingly powerful lineup of AI offerings to the leaders of some of India’s largest companies. In a 35-minute keynote address, Nadella implored businesses to begin exploring ways to deploy AI to boost productivity and refine their products, while urging them not to fall behind.

Nadella at Microsoft’s Mumbai event on Wednesday. Image credits: Microsoft

Born in India, Nadella said that India has already become the second-largest talent base for AI developers on GitHub. Puneet Chandok, who quit his top role at AWS India last year to join Microsoft to lead the company’s India business, added: “India is not just incredible anymore. We are credible as well. India is starting to dream big, and going after this dream like our lives depend on it.”

The company also announced that it will offer AI skilling opportunities to 2 million Indians by next year.

“This is the first time I feel what is happening in India and the rest of the world there is no gap. If anything, the use cases here are so unique and paving their own path,” Nadella added. One such unique offering, Nadella later highlighted, is Karya, an “ethical data company” that creates datasets in multiple Indian languages to train AI models while providing jobs and education to people in rural areas.