logoalt Hacker News

abeppu • yesterday at 4:20 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> Microsoft bought it for OpenAI only, to train Copilot on the vast amount of code.

I think this gets the timeline wrong. Microsoft acquired GH in 2018 and started the partnership with OpenAI in summer 2019.

I'm sure there was some strategy to extract value from it that wouldn't serve its users but I think OpenAI was not initially meant to be the beneficiary.

Replies

not_your_vase • yesterday at 4:27 PM

Maybe MS just got extremely lucky, like winning-the-lottery-lucky.

But your timeline is off, however. Their partnership started in 2016[1]. In 2019 MS started to invest publicly in OpenAI - but by then they have had some history.

To me, this is at least suspicious. Granted, I have no hard proof.

[1]: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/11/15/advancing-ambiti...