April

3 events

Editors' summary

Microsoft puts $1.5 billion into the Gulf, Google leans on DeepMind

On 16 April, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 of Abu Dhabi, with Vice Chair and President Brad Smith joining its board. G42's ties to Chinese companies had drawn scrutiny in the US Congress, and the deal came with an assurance agreement involving the US and UAE governments.

On the 18th, Google announced a reorganisation. Teams building models, split between Research and Google DeepMind, were consolidated into Google DeepMind, and the Responsible AI teams moved there too. Android, Chrome and Pixel were gathered into a new Platforms and Devices group under Rick Osterloh.

On the 23rd, Microsoft released Phi-3-mini at 3.8 billion parameters, claiming it matched models ten times its size and carrying the approach of training small models on textbook-quality data up to a practically useful scale.

Meta released Llama 3 on the same 18th.

This block is written by the editors. It is kept separate from the sourced record below.

Record3 events

16
BusinessMicrosoft / G42 / Brad Smith
Microsoft invests $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi's G42
Microsoft took a minority stake in G42, the Abu Dhabi-based AI company, with a $1.5 billion investment. Vice Chair and President Brad Smith joined G42's board. G42 will run its AI services on Microsoft Azure, and the two companies agreed to set up a $1 billion fund for developers. The deal came with an intergovernmental assurance agreement involving the US and the UAE, binding both sides to standards on AI safety and security — presented as an answer to concerns in the US Congress about G42's ties to Chinese companies.
18
GovernanceGoogle / Sundar Pichai / Rick Osterloh
Google consolidates model building and Responsible AI into DeepMind
In a note to staff, CEO Sundar Pichai announced a reorganisation. Teams building models, previously split between Google Research and Google DeepMind, were consolidated into Google DeepMind, and the Responsible AI teams working on AI safety moved there from Research — so that they would sit alongside the people designing and training Gemini. Pichai also created Platforms and Devices, a single group covering Android, Chrome, ChromeOS and Pixel, led by senior vice president Rick Osterloh.
23
ModelMicrosoft
Microsoft releases Phi-3-mini
Microsoft released Phi-3-mini, a 3.8-billion-parameter small language model, available through Azure AI Studio, Hugging Face and Ollama in 4K and 128K context variants. Microsoft claimed it matched models ten times its size, with benchmark scores close to GPT-3.5. It carried the Phi line's approach — training small models on textbook-quality data — up to a practically useful scale, and Microsoft said Phi-3-small at 7 billion parameters and Phi-3-medium at 14 billion would follow.

↑ 2024

Microsoft invests $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi's G42

Google consolidates model building and Responsible AI into DeepMind

Microsoft releases Phi-3-mini