Microsoft AI Chief: Staying in the Frontier AI Race Will Cost Hundreds of Billions

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman estimates that staying competitive in frontier AI development will require 'hundreds of billions of dollars' over the next five to ten years, a sum that doesn't even account for the high salaries companies are paying individual researchers and technical staff. Speaking on a podcast, Suleyman compared Microsoft to a 'modern construction company' where hundreds of thousands of workers are building gigawatts of CPUs and AI accelerators. There's 'a structural advantage by being inside a big company,' he said.

When asked whether startups could compete with Big Tech, Suleyman said 'it's hard to say,' adding that 'the ambiguity is what's driving the frothiness of the valuations.' Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in September he'd rather risk 'misspending a couple of hundred billion' than fall behind in superintelligence.

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