Microsoft was involved with ChatGPT before incorporating it into its Bing browser. The tech giant was an early investor in OpenAI, the AI research company behind ChatGPT, even before ChatGPT was released to the public. Also: How to use AI chatbots to do research for papers, presentations, studies, and moreMicrosoft's first involvement with OpenAI was in 2019, when Microsoft invested $1 billion, and then $2 billion in the years after. In January, Microsoft extended its partnership with OpenAI through a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment. Neither company disclosed the investment value, but unnamed sources told Bloomberg it will total $10 billion over multiple years. In return, Microsoft's Azure service will be OpenAI's exclusive cloud-computing provider, powering all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and API services.