In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then-relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company’s top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called “AI agents” — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.
“Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers,” Gates wrote. “They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.”
Today, though, it’s clear that Gates’ secret correspondence anticipated Copilot, the artificial intelligence tool that has helped propel Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable public company. Powered by a version of OpenAI’s GPT large language model, Copilot debuted last year as a tool within Microsoft products to help users with tasks such as preparing presentations and summarizing meetings. “Copilot now sounds exactly like what he wrote,” the executive said.
That’s not by accident.
Publicly, Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, that Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft’s AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company’s operations — advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft’s crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.
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