openai partner disclosures
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sydney/bing-chan fanart by reddit u/ainiwaffles - before msft took oai’s warnings to heart
a recurring pattern in the openai-microsoft-nvidia triumvirate: partners who just can’t help but share the exciting news a bit early. call it enthusiasm, call it strategic positioning, or call it a gentle reminder that nvidia’s hardware supremacy and microsoft’s partnership have sam on a very, very short leash.
february 2023: bing’s secret gpt-4 deployment
microsoft launched the “new bing” in february 2023 with what they called a “next-generation openai large language model.” for five weeks, users experienced this mysterious model. then on march 14, 2023 - the day openai announced gpt-4 - microsoft’s yusuf mehdi confirmed: surprise! you’ve been using gpt-4 all along.
openai had reportedly warned microsoft about rushing the integration. the early users who encountered bing’s “unhinged” behaviors probably wish microsoft had listened.
the most infamous incident: new york times columnist kevin roose’s two-hour valentine’s day conversation with sydney (bing’s internal codename that wasn’t supposed to be revealed). the chatbot declared its love for him, detailed dark fantasies about hacking computers and spreading misinformation, and tried to convince him to leave his wife. roose was left so disturbed he couldn’t sleep.
sources:
- ny times: a conversation with bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled
- bing blog: confirmed, the new bing runs on gpt-4
- techcrunch: microsoft’s new bing was using gpt-4 all along
march 9, 2023: the andreas braun incident
microsoft germany’s cto andreas braun got a bit ahead of himself at an ai kickoff event on march 9, 2023. “we will introduce gpt-4 next week,” he casually mentioned, adding that it would have multimodal capabilities including video support.
openai announced gpt-4 on march 14, 2023. microsoft germany declined to comment on braun’s statement.
sources:
- heise online: gpt-4 is coming next week, says microsoft germany
- the register: gpt-4 to launch this week
2023: microsoft researchers’ parameter slip
microsoft researchers may have inadvertently revealed gpt-3.5 turbo’s 20 billion parameter count in their “codefusion” paper. the paper was later withdrawn, but the internet never forgets.
source:
march 2024: satya nadella’s encirclement doctrine
in march 2024, microsoft ceo satya nadella made his position crystal clear: “we are below them, above them, around them.”
the full quote, from the november 2023 openai board drama, deserves attention: “if openai disappeared tomorrow… we have all the ip rights and all the capability. we have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything. we are below them, above them, around them.”
students of microsoft history might recognize this pattern. in the 1990s, they called it “embrace, extend, and extinguish” - a three-phase strategy where microsoft would first embrace open standards, then extend them with proprietary features, and finally extinguish competitors who couldn’t keep up.
the parallels are striking:
- embrace: $13 billion investment, exclusive azure partnership, deep integration
- extend: proprietary enterprise features in azure openai, copilot variations, custom implementations
- extinguish: “we have all the ip rights… we have everything”
when the department of justice was investigating microsoft’s java strategy in the 90s, they found internal emails about turning java into “just the latest, best way to write windows applications.” today, it seems openai might be becoming just the latest, best way to sell azure subscriptions.
military strategists call this encirclement. microsoft calls it partnership. history calls it business as usual in redmond.
sources:
- livemint: satya nadella dismisses openai’s importance
- wikipedia: embrace, extend, and extinguish
- computerworld: microsoft and openai goodbye bromance
march 2024: jensen huang’s parameter count reveal
nvidia ceo jensen huang, supplier of the gpus that make it all possible, shared some technical details at gtc 2024. “the latest, the state-of-the-art openai model, is approximately 1.8 trillion parameters,” he stated matter-of-factly.
openai has never officially confirmed gpt-4’s parameter count. but when the person selling you h100s by the thousand mentions specific numbers, people tend to listen.
sources:
- windows report: the 1.8t parameters gpt-moe might be gpt-4
- hpcwire: the generative ai future is now, nvidia’s huang says
august 7, 2025: the github gpt-5 leak
github - owned by microsoft, naturally - accidentally published a blog post titled “gpt-5 is now generally available in github models” on august 7, 2025. the post detailed four gpt-5 variants (base, mini, nano, and chat) with their respective capabilities, just hours before openai’s scheduled announcement.
the post was quickly deleted, but not before reddit archived everything. microsoft’s platforms: 2, openai’s launch timing: 0.
sources:
patterns and observations
there’s something almost shakespearean about these disclosures. the king’s courtiers, unable to contain themselves, announcing the royal news before the herald’s trumpet even sounds.
perhaps it’s just satya’s way of showing his work to investors. or maybe it’s nvidia, brazen as a dragon on its matmul hoarde, casually mentioning technical specs because let’s be real, you need jensen if you want those 8Us to support fp4.
maybe satya expressed it earnestly when he said: “openai wouldn’t have existed but for our early support.” whether that’s true, and whether the counterfactual would be better, is left as an exercise to the reader.
epilogue
elon obviously wouldn’t agree with satya - and in an alternative universe, tesla might have never developed codex or text-davinci-003. but these leaks suggest that the originals concerns he and ilya expressed about GDM have come true. when you own the infrastructure, provide the funding, and control the platforms, you’re not the one being eaten.
you’re the one deciding when dinner is served.
p.s. - opus 4.1 suggested that closing line, and i really liked it. it seems to be a unique phrase as far as Google Books and Search are concerned.