Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, once called the cooperation between his company and Microsoft “the best bromance in technology,” but recently their relationship has become somewhat tense. On top of that, it has become known that the contract between the partners contains a clause that would allow the ChatGPT developer to withdraw from the agreement. This is stated in a new report by The New York Times.

The problems started when Sam Altman was fired as the company’s CEO. After that, Microsoft and, in particular, CEO Satya Nadella rethought investing in the startup, as they had not been informed about such actions. In addition, the financial pressure on the startup, concerns about sustainability, and disagreements between the two companies created even more tension in the partnership.

Another element that worsens the relationship between the two companies is that the original agreement between OpenAI and Microsoft obliged the ChatGPT developer to buy computing power exclusively from the tech giant. Over the past few years, the AI startup has been trying to renegotiate the terms to get more capacity to train large language models, and some employees have even claimed that the tech giant does not provide enough of the same capacity. At the same time, Microsoft executives became concerned that their AI capabilities were too heavily dependent on the startup’s success, and as a result, the company began to slowly pull away from the partnership.

The tech giant also paid at least $650 million to hire most of Inflection’s team, and the startup’s CEO and founder Mustafa Suleyman was appointed to head a new group within the company that develops AI technologies based on ChatGPT software. Suleyman will also be responsible for creating technologies that will replace the software the company receives from OpenAI.

Such actions did not sit well with Sam Altman and other startup executives. In addition, anonymous sources reported that during one of the meetings, Suleiman yelled at an OpenAI employee because the startup was not providing new technologies to the company as quickly as it should.

As a result, Microsoft still allowed the ChatGPT developer to buy computing power from competitors, including a deal with Oracle worth about $10 billion. In addition, the partners also discussed the possibility of reducing the price of computing power in the future, but the results of these negotiations remain secret.

The icing on the cake is that the agreement between the partners contains a clause that will allow OpenAI to withdraw from this cooperation. The point is that as soon as the startup creates general artificial intelligence, i.e., one that can match the power of the human brain, it will be able to restrict the tech giant’s access to its technologies. In addition, the board of directors can decide when to release general AI, which gives them more flexibility in this partnership.

Nevertheless, the two companies have not made any harsh statements and usually say that the partnership is going well, and Microsoft recently joined another round of funding, which also included NVIDIA and various investment companies. In total, the startup received $6.6 billion, after which it opened a credit line for another $4 billion.