The world of artificial intelligence is exploding right in front of our eyes. Companies like OpenAI, Mistral and Inflection are kind of becoming known names. But beneath the surface of this revolution, there’s a complex web. A web of relationships, acquisitions, and power moves that are reshaping the AI industry.
Let’s zoom in into the timeline.
It’s the July of 2024, and the AI landscape looks somewhat like a big web diagram. Tech giants like Microsoft and Google are racing to dominate this up-and-coming field and you will see a repetitive patter emerging. People are moving. And not just any people, these are founders and key players. And they’re not moving to small more exciting startups with a lot of potential. They’re moving up the chain, they’re moving to the boring big sluggish tech giants.
Let’s rewind a little bit over here and come back to 2010
Three researchers (Mustafa Suleyman, Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg) founded a company called DeepMind. Fast forward to 2014, and Google all of a sudden acquires them. This pattern of tech giants absorbing AI talent isn’t relatively new as you can see, but it is accelerating.
Now, let’s come back to 2023.
Last year Mustafa Suleyman, one of Google DeepMind’s original co-founders, had left Google and co-founded a company called Inflection AI. In a sudden move, Mustafa leaves Inflection AI along with his entire core team to join Microsoft and becomes the CEO of Microsoft’s Consumer AI division. This isn’t just a single job change. It’s a seismic shift in how companies do business especially when they see blood in the water. Blood in the form of artificial intelligence.
But here’s where it gets really murky.
Another Inflection co-founder, Reid Hoffman comes into the picture. Now he’s not just any tech entrepreneur. He sits on the board of Microsoft. And while he sits on the board of Microsoft he’s also investing in AI startups that use Open AI’s technology – a company that Microsoft themselves are heavily invested in to the tune of $10 billion. Do you see the conflicts rising?
Fortune Magazine covered this in December 2023 that Hoffman is one of those high-flying VCs who have served on the board of major tech companies while also backing AI startups through their own investment firms. And you see this web of conflicts really stretches far beyond just one or two players. look at Marc Andreessen over here. A general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. One of the most influential venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. Andreessen sits on Meta’s board. But here’s where it gets a little murky. His firm has poured hundreds over millions of dollars into OpenAI, Mistral AI, and Character AI and All of these companies are direct competitors to Meta’s own AI efforts.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Kleiner Perkins, another heavyweight in the VC world, has invested in Together AI. A generative AI cloud platform company. Sounds innocent enough right? Not when you see that Kleiner Perkins’ chair, John Doerr, sits on the board of Alphabet – Google’s parent company.
And guess what? Google Cloud is a direct competitor to Together AI.
This isn’t just about a few isolated cases. It’s sort of a pattern if you zoom out and its repeating itself across the entire AI industry. Venture capitalists, board members, and executives are play multiple roles, often with competing interests. And just as we were researching about this growing pattern of acquihire in the industry, Amazon just happened to make another power move. It snatched up a massive chunk of Adept, a red-hot AI startup that was seen as a serious competitor to OpenAI. We’re not talking about a couple of engineers here . Amazon snagged a whopping 66% of Adept’s entire team! Now, Adept wasn’t exactly some basement operation. These guys were the real deal. Just last year they raised 350 million from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Bringing their total raise to a cool 400 mil
Now the question we need to ask is how can these individuals make unbiased decision when they have stakes in competing companies and more importantly what does this mean for Innovation Fair competition and the overall future of AI?
Open AI internal drama
OpenAI, once a non-profit research lab, is now at the center of its own drama. Recently, Open AI’s research scientist and Co-founder, John Schulman left Open AI and Joined Antrophic, an AI startup that’s famously backed by Amazon. Also, a few months back Co-founder Ilya Sutskever the same guy who wrote the Revolutionary paper that sort of got the whole generative AI thing going along with a key safety team member Jan Leike left open AI. Whistleblowers alleged that the culture of recklessness and secrecy sort of mars the entire origination.
And remember Elon Musk? He too co-founded OpenAI but left in 2018, citing conflicts of interest with his work at Tesla.
This tweet hints at a tensions brewing beneath the surface. By the way Dario Amodei is currently the co-founder and CEO of Antrophic, he formerly worked as the VP of Research at OpenAI. We have also seen the same AI safety concern during the Open AI drama where Sam Altman was fired and then rehired. Other members of Open AI, like Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley had raised similar sounding concern about AI safety And they also mentioned that Sam was not consistently candid whatever that means. We actually took a deep dive into this whole OpenAI saga in our YouTube video here.
Despite Inflection’s recent success and high profile in the AI market, Microsoft’s deal with them is pretty unusual. While it’s not an acquisition, per say Microsoft gains AI expertise without taking any equity or intellectual property from Inflection. This move also raises questions about Microsoft’s own relationship with OpenAI, which recently listed OpenAI as one of their competitors. Not to mention their potential conflict of interest and the insuing regulatory scrutiny.
Regulatory Scrutiny
As AI is becoming more and more powerful, the stakes are really getting higher here. These moves aren’t just about talent they are about control. Control over the technology that could actually end up reshaping the world. And it’s not going unnoticed. The U.S. Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are watching and they’re not really happy about what’s going on.
Microsoft has stakes in OpenAI, it has acquired LinkedIn which was founded by Reid Hoffman (that’s how we got the board seat in Microsoft and now he has a deal with Inflection). All the while Microsoft has also invested in Mistral a French competitor to OpenAI.
But here’s the big question: Is this the beginning of an AI monopoly? Or will the regulators step in strongly to keep a level field.
The decisions made in these boardrooms and government offices are gonna essentially alter the way we look at AI in future and also in a way humanity is gonna end up using AI. These issues are not just theoretical. They are happening right now, and they’re affecting real people. People like you and me. As mentioned the Regulators aren’t really asleep at the wheel over here. Just recently the US justice department has opened an investigation into Nvidia for potential antitrust violations. At the same time the Federal Trade Commission is probing the relationship between Microsoft and openAI.
The AI power game is intensifying. The question is who would be left standing when the dust settles and more importantly what will it mean for the rest of us?