Salesforce CEO claims Microsoft's OpenAI partnership is in the crosshairs with "a full proximal rupture" that can't be mended

With the emergence of generative AI and its broad adoption across the world, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says we're in unprecedented times with the technology set to revolutionize every aspect of our lives (via The Financial Times).

According to Salesforce's CEO:

"There are these Steve Jobs moments where a whole new part of the industry gets invented. So, it could be Tom Watson with the mainframe, it could be Steve Jobs with the personal computer, it could be Marc Andreessen with the browser."

"We’re in a moment where we see a level of innovation and capability and funding, and all the magic of Silicon Valley."

The executive discussed the potential effect AI might have on jobs and humanity. And as you might have guessed, he also spoke about his feud with Microsoft, especially after indicating that Copilot is just Microsoft's new Clippy and doesn't deliver value.

"What’s your beef with Satya [Nadella]?" Stephen Morris, the Financial Times’ San Francisco Bureau Chief, asked Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. The executive famously hasn't pulled any punches when it comes to criticizing Microsoft's AI efforts.

Microsoft's top management executives watered down his claims, further suggesting that Benioff doesn't know what he is talking about. Microsoft Chief Communication Officer Frank X. Shaw addressed some of Benioff's comments about the company, suggesting that his borderline obsession with Copilot is "all about marketing, less about truth or substance".

However, Salesforce's CEO says that he's noticed that saying those things after it turned out what he was saying was right. Benioff reiterated that he thinks Microsoft disappointed its customers with Copilot.

Compared to Cursor AI's immense success in the developer front, Benioff claims Microsoft has failed to match its standards with Copilot and GitHub, prompting OpenAI to acquire Cursor AI’s competitor, Windsurf, for $3 billion. "This is because Microsoft’s Copilot and GitHub also failed, so it didn’t deliver the level of productivity that it could have," Benioff added.

The executive indicated that "Microsoft is just a ChatGPT reseller." He claims that this is the tech giant's AI strategy, describing Microsoft's apparent frustration with this strategy, prompting it to hire Google DeepMind's co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, to run its AI division and develop a new model under its Prometheus program.

Salesforce CEO says Microsoft and OpenAI are drifting further apart

Benioff further claimed that the move might be Microsoft's way to cut its cord from OpenAI, and emancipate itself from an overdependence on the ChatGPT maker for its AI technology. He foresees a future where ChatGPT isn't at the heart of Copilot.

The Salesforce CEO indicated that a presentation by OpenAI's CFO (Chief Financial Officer), Sarah Friar, at a Goldman Sachs conference corroborated his theory. According to the executive, OpenAI's stack diagram didn't feature Microsoft's software in the data centre, application, API, or model level.

For context, a stack diagram is a traditional technique that tech firms use to highlight their strategies for the future.

When OpenAI unveiled its $500 billion Stargate project designed to facilitate the construction of data centers across the United States, Benioff predicted that Microsoft wouldn't use OpenAI's technology in the future for its AI advances.

Interestingly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that the company is still committed to investing $80 billion to build data centers for its own AI plans.

However, a recent report revealed that Microsoft pulled out of two mega data center deals because it doesn't want to provide additional training support for ChatGPT anymore.

A separate report indicated that Sam Altman claimed that OpenAI is no longer compute-constrained, shortly after Microsoft lost its exclusive cloud provider status. This doesn't come as a surprise, as the ChatGPT maker had openly voiced its concerns about Microsoft not meeting its cloud computing needs.

Elsewhere, Microsoft is reportedly developing in-house AI models and testing third-party ones for Copilot despite its multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman corroborated the report's claims, revealing that the company is developing "off-frontier" AI models, which will be 3 or 6 months behind OpenAI. He indicated that the company's strategy is to play a very tight second at a cost-friendly price.