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

Microsoft is taking a page from OpenAI’s playbook, literally. Bloomberg first reported that the tech giant plans to leverage 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 straightforward: OpenAI is designing AI chips with Broadcom, and Microsoft gets full access to the innovations. “As they innovate even at the system level, we get access to all of it,” CEO Satya Nadella explained on a newly released 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 intellectual property rights to OpenAI’s chip designs while maintaining access to the company’s AI models through 2032. The only carve-out? OpenAI’s consumer hardware, which the ChatGPT maker presumably wants to develop and sell independently.

The collaboration underscores a broader reality in tech: building cutting-edge AI chips is brutally difficult and expensive. Rather than continuing to struggle alone, Microsoft is betting that OpenAI’s expertise — plus a smartly structured contract — can accelerate its own ambitions.