OpenAI expands in Europe with Zurich office
Live MintOpenAI said it would set up a new office in Zurich, Switzerland, as part of efforts from the ChatGPT maker to bolster its presence in Europe as the continent emerges as a key battleground for regulating artificial intelligence. Microsoft, which invested $13.75 billion in OpenAI since 2019, including its share of the startup’s latest $6.6 billion fundraise, has a presence Zurich. OpenAI started building a team in the city, poaching multimodal AI researchers Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai from Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research lab. OpenAI’s ties with Microsoft are currently under scrutiny in the UK, where antitrust officials launched a review in December last year to determine whether Microsoft’s investment and its partnership with the startup should be considered a de facto merger that might stifle competition in the country.