Inflection AI, the AI startup that was stripped bare by Microsoft several months ago, wants to restrict the free use of its chatbot Pi. The company is also considering licensing its models to other companies. Inflection is struggling to keep operations going, as nearly all its staff has disappeared, and GPU usage is costly.
Inflection will also allow users to export chat conversations. This is a first, as no other comparable GenAI application offers this capability yet. In theory, the conversations could be imported into Gemini or ChatGPT, for example, but these do not (yet) offer this possibility.
GPU computing power is expensive
Since Microsoft brought Mustafa Suleyman, the erstwhile CEO of Inflection AI, onboard along with much of Inflection AI’s staff, Sean White runs the remainder of the company. White has experience at Nokia and Mozilla and was co-founder of BrightSky Labs. White now sees no option but to limit the free use of Pi because otherwise, it would demand too much expensive GPU computing power. The company will also focus more on enterprise customers and less on consumer applications, White reports to Techcrunch.
Pi is a rival to ChatGPT- and Gemini-like applications. The chatbot runs on Inflection’s LLMs, such as Inflection-1, Inflection-2 and 2.5, which competed with competitors’ PaLM, Claude and Llama LLMs last year. According to White, some 13,000 organizations have already expressed interest in the API that allows access to Pi. Or rather, they have filled out a form indicating they want to stay informed.
Inventory bought up
Several months ago, Microsoft bought up pretty much the entire contents of Inflection AI during a so-called acqui-hire, which does not involve an official acquisition but does involve buying out key personnel. The tech giant also paid 620 million dollars for licensing the company’s software and LLMs. Microsoft also paid 30 million dollars to settle all the legal ramifications involved in the unofficial takeover.
This is notable because Microsoft was one of the investors who put 1.3 billion dollars into the startup a little over a year ago. The other investors were more or less ‘bought out’ with the millions Microsoft paid.
Also read: Microsoft scoops up Inflection AI, will pay €600 million