Microsoft kills industrial metaverse project Project Airsim and shifts artificial intelligence strategy to OpenAI

News on October 25, according to foreign media citing people familiar with the matter, members of Microsoft’s team responsible for developing the “Industrial Metaverse” Project Airsim received a “team update” on Monday. ” notice and was told that the company would lay off the entire team and terminate the project. Microsoft also confirmed that it will terminate the project on December 15 this year.

Microsoft said in a statement: "We are proud of the impact this incubation program has had on customers, and we will continue to invest in Azure to support virtual worlds in industry and various artificial intelligence projects within the company. Provide computing platform." "We are working closely with customers to achieve this transition."

Prior to this, Microsoft officially stopped supporting the Project Bonsai project on October 19. Project Bonsai is an artificial intelligence development platform for building automated systems for industrial use. Both projects are considered part of Microsoft's "Industrial Metaverse."

Informed sources said that Microsoft acquired artificial intelligence startup Bonsai in 2018, which was considered within the company to be Microsoft’s response to Google’s acquisition of Deepmind. Project Airsim was originally launched as an open source project in 2017 and has since shifted its focus to products for industrial customers.

Project Airsim and Project Bonsai were both promoted by Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott. He has brokered a partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI, and the purpose of incubating these two projects is to allow industrial customers to use new products from Microsoft's cloud business.

According to people familiar with the project, Nadella has talked about Project Bonsai in the same way he talks about OpenAI today, mentioning Project Bonsai in employee meetings and public interviews as part of Microsoft's artificial intelligence future. .

Although Microsoft initially views these projects as a means to attract application developers in the industrial field and help Microsoft's Azure cloud compete with Amazon Web Services, the person said. But as Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI grew, Scott became less and less interested in these projects.

In early 2023, around the time Microsoft announced its expanded partnership with OpenAI, the company also began to promote its vision of the industrial metaverse. But the good times did not last long for related projects. This spring, Microsoft terminated Project Bonsai and laid off the 100-person team responsible for the project. This was only a few months after Microsoft established the team.

This person familiar with the matter said that the reason why Microsoft retained Project Airsim at the time was because it believed that this incubation product had a large number of potential customers.

Gurdeep Pall, former vice president of Microsoft Corporation, served as director of product incubation and commercial artificial intelligence, responsible for Project Bonsai and most recently Project Airsim. Last month, he left Microsoft after 33 years.

The termination of Project Airsim is another example of Microsoft shifting resources to OpenAI. It was reported last month that Microsoft was abandoning experimental products such as Surface headphones to focus on investing in artificial intelligence.

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