By Sam Boughedda
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is readying its own artificial intelligence chip for powering large language models, according to a report by The Information on Tuesday.
The tech giant, which was an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. The report, citing two people with direct knowledge of the project, states that Microsoft has been developing the chip used for powering the large-language models since as early as 2019.
In addition, the chips, internally code-named Athena, are available to a small amount of Microsoft and OpenAI employees who are testing them.
The report adds that Microsoft is aiming to save time and money on its AI efforts and hopes the chip will perform better than chips from other vendors.
Microsoft shares rose in early Tuesday trading, hitting a high of $291.80 per share. However, they are now down around 0.1% on the day. On Monday, the stock gained almost 1% following reports that Samsung (KS:005930) is considering switching the default search engine on its smartphones and tablets from Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to Microsoft's Bing.