Inflection AI, the AI startup that was scrapped by Microsoft a few months ago, wants to limit the free use of its chatbot Pi. The company is also considering licensing its models to other companies. Inflection is struggling to maintain operations because almost all of its employees are gone 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 option. Theoretically, the conversations could be imported into Gemini or ChatGPT, for example, but these do not (yet) offer this option.
GPU computing power is expensive
Since Microsoft brought on board Mustafa Suleyman, the former CEO of Inflection AI, and much of Inflection AI’s staff, Sean White has been running the rest of the company. White has experience at Nokia and Mozilla and co-founded BrightSky Labs. White now sees no other option than to limit the free use of Pi, as it would require too much expensive GPU processing power. The company will also focus more on enterprise customers and less on consumer applications, White tells Techcrunch.
Pi is a competitor to ChatGPT and Gemini-like applications. The chatbot runs on Inflection’s LLMs, such as Inflection-1, Inflection-2 and 2.5, which last year competed with LLMs from rivals PaLM, Claude and Llama. According to White, around 13,000 organizations have already expressed interest in the API that provides access to Pi. Or rather, they have filled out a form indicating that they want to stay updated.
Stocks bought up
A few months ago, Microsoft bought virtually all of Inflection AI’s content in a so-called acqui-hire. While this is not an official takeover, it is a purchase of key personnel. The tech giant also paid $620 million to license the company’s software and LLMs. Microsoft also paid $30 million to settle all legal consequences of the unofficial takeover.
This is notable because Microsoft was one of the investors that invested $1.3 billion in the startup just over a year ago. The other investors were more or less “bought out” with the millions that Microsoft paid.
Read also: Microsoft acquires Inflection AI and pays 600 million euros
