Not many are aware that IT consulting giant Infosys, together with Elon Musk, AWS, YC Research, and a few others, had donated a sizable $1 billion to OpenAI back in 2015, when the latter began as a non-profit organisation. 

But what transpired thereafter and why is Infosys not the Microsoft of IT consulting?

The donation to OpenAI, previously undisclosed, occurred during Vishal Sikka’s tenure as the leader of Infosys. Sikka, a strong advocate for AI, played a significant role in facilitating the donation to the freshly-minted AI company. Additionally, he acted as an advisor to OpenAI, along with Yoshua Bengio, Sergey Levine, Pieter Abbeel, and Alan Kay.

“Our wish is that together the OpenAI team will do unfettered research in the most important, most relevant dimensions of AI, no matter how long it takes to get there, not limited to just identifying dancing cats in videos, but to creating ideas and inventions that amplify our humanity,” Sikka said, in an Infosys blog post in 2015, identifying with OpenAI’s mission. 

A donation that didn’t become an investment

Sikka’s decision to invest in OpenAI was influenced by its open-source philosophy. “If complex systems are not open, not open to be used, extended, and learned about, they end up becoming yet another mysterious thing for us, ones that we end up praying to and mystifying. The more open we make AI, the better,” he said, pointing out that openness was the most important factor behind investing in OpenAI.

Sikka had previously said that Infosys would benefit heavily from OpenAI because of the products and intelligent software systems that Altman was hoping to build and maintain for all domains and industries. “In addition, as a large services company, many parts of our work can transform fundamentally with AI,” he said. 

In August 2017, Sikka stepped down from his role as managing director and chief executive at Infosys. With his departure, the initiative to integrate OpenAI’s technology into Infosys came to an abrupt halt. 

In 2019, Sikka launched ‘Vianai‘ with an initial funding of $50 million. The startup devised its unique programming language aimed at facilitating the adoption of AI and machine learning techniques by a broader range of developers and organisations.

However, significant changes have occurred since then. OpenAI moved on from being a non-profit organisation to a for-profit entity with a capped return in 2019. Then there was a billion-dollar investment from Microsoft, for which Musk recently took OpenAI to court. The original donors did not get any equity in the company after the Microsoft investment. 

On a different note, Altman recently claimed that Musk wanted Tesla to acquire OpenAI and turn it into a for-profit company in 2018, since he thought the company would fail. “He wanted OpenAI to be basically acquired by Tesla in the same way that… or maybe something similar… or maybe something more dramatic than the partnership with Microsoft (sic),” said Altman. 

Disagreements occurred, and Musk left. 

What’s up with Infosys in GenAI

Sikka’s recognition of OpenAI’s potential at an early stage and his willingness to embrace it underscore his status as a far-sighted visionary. Narayan Murthy, the founder of Infosys, also hailed Sikka for his forward-thinking approach. Infosys could have become the Microsoft of IT consulting if it would have made the deal in 2019. 

The current CEO, Salil Parekh, confirmed that Infosys had backed OpenAI through a donation. However, regarding any potential future collaboration with OpenAI, Parekh stated that there were no intentions for investments or engagement in related activities with OpenAI.

In September last year, Infosys had announced a partnership with Microsoft to develop solutions using Infosys Topaz and Azure OpenAI Service jointly and boost enterprise customers’ AI solutions. Parekh had also confirmed that the company was using ChatGPT within the organisation to boost productivity. 

During the same month, Infosys also partnered with NVIDIA to boost adoption in enterprise AI. The partnership unveiled plans to establish the NVIDIA Center of Excellence dedicated to training and certifying 50,000 of its employees in NVIDIA AI technology. 

Moreover, in December last year, Infosys reported the termination of a $1.5 billion deal by a global client. The announcement came a few months after India’s IT giant disclosed the signing of a $1.5 billion agreement with an unnamed global company in September the same year. There is no definite proof of which company it was that cancelled the deal. 

In July, Infosys had also signed a deal with another undisclosed existing client to provide AI services, with the target spend of $2 billion over five years.

Certainly, there’s lots happening to accelerate Infosys’ AI vision under Parekh. But it could have been a lot more beneficial had it been a direct investor in OpenAI, not through Microsoft, or any other company.