Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, the startup behind popular artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, according to a report from Semafor.

The deal is part of a funding round with other investors involved that would value OpenAI at a whopping $29 billion, Semafor reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

It isn’t clear whether the deal has been finalized but term sheets sent to prospective investors indicated the plan was to close the deal by the end of 2022, Semafor reported.

Microsoft will reportedly get a 75% share of OpenAI’s profits until it makes back the money on its investment, after which the company would assume a 49% stake in OpenAI.

Microsoft and OpenAI were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

​For several weeks, the tech world has been abuzz with chatter about ChatGPT. The tool is a natural language processing model, meaning it is designed to generate text that appears as though a human wrote it.

The AI model, itself a variant of the GPT-3 family of large language models, has been used for everything from developing code to writing college essays.

A bet on ChatGPT could help Microsoft boost its efforts in web search, a market dominated by Google. The company’s Bing browser has only a small share of the global search engine market, however it is hoped the deal could help the firm chip away at Google’s dominance by offering more advanced search capabilities.

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German-based biotech company BioNTech SE is set to acquire InstaDeep, a Tunis-born and U.K.-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup, for up to £562 million (~$680 million) in its largest deal yet.

Per Financial Times, the German vaccine maker intends to use InstaDeep’s machine learning to “improve its drug discovery process, including developing personalised treatments tailored to a patient’s cancer.”
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BioNTech is said to pay £362 million — a mix of cash and an undisclosed amount of BioNTech shares — upfront. The remaining £200 million is dependent on how InstaDeep performs in the future, according to the company’s statement.

Last January, InstaDeep, founded by Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim in 2014, raised $100 million in Series B financing led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and CDIB. BioNTech was among the participating investors, which also included Chimera Abu Dhabi, Deutsche Bahn’s DB Digital Ventures and Google.

The Tunis and London-based enterprise AI startup which uses advanced machine learning techniques to bring AI to applications within an enterprise environment, has offices in Paris, Tunis, Lagos, Dubai and Cape Town.

CEO Beguir, in an interview with TechCrunch last year, said InstaDeep uses reinforcement learning, a kind of machine learning that helps design optimization strategies and tackles them simultaneously. Instances where InstaDeep applies its AI tech includes helping a large shipping company to efficiently transport thousands of containers to a railway station or automate scheduling for 10,000 trains. Other examples are the design of advanced therapeutics with silicon and routing components on a printed circuit board.

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• While AI-driven healthcare solutions have proven their impact and reliability, healthcare organizations struggle to achieve the desired value from their investments in AI.
• The most promising use cases are in early diagnosis and risk stratification for chronic disease, but AI also has the potential to revolutionize drug discovery and health system operations.
• AI's impact on global health depends on three enablers: usable, representative data; trustworthy design; and, scalability.

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Three seismic shifts are driving AI innovation and AI’s impact on global health. Firstly, there is the data deluge. The doubling time for medical knowledge in 1950 was 50 years. In 2020 it was 73 days. In our survey of 1,000 doctors in the US, Europe and Asia, the vast majority said they’re overwhelmed by the volume of patient data. Without technology, humans can’t keep up.

Secondly, there are novel problems. COVID-19 exacerbated existing healthcare issues, worsening an already severe doctor shortage and testing the solvency of many hospitals, among other issues. Technology must enable healthcare providers to do more with less or else patients will suffer.

Thirdly, there is a technological renaissance. Look at ChatGPT or what deep learning can do to unlock the mysteries of the universe in search of cures.

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