Microsoft Cuts Off Industrial Metaverse Project ProjectAirsim and Shifts AI Strategy to OpenAI

On October 25th, according to sources quoted by foreign media, members of Microsoft's team responsible for developing the "Industrial Metaverse" ProjectAirsim received a "team update" notice on Monday and were informed that the company would fire the entire team and terminate the project. Microsoft has also confirmed that it will terminate the project on December 15th of this year

On October 25th, according to sources quoted by foreign media, members of Microsoft's team responsible for developing the "Industrial Metaverse" ProjectAirsim received a "team update" notice on Monday and were informed that the company would fire the entire team and terminate the project. Microsoft has also confirmed that it will terminate the project on December 15th of this year.

Microsoft stated in a statement: "We are proud of the impact this incubation project has brought to our customers, and we will continue to invest in Azure to provide computing platforms for virtual worlds in the industrial sector and various artificial intelligence projects within the company." "We are working closely with our customers to achieve this transformation

Prior to this, Microsoft officially discontinued its support for the Project Bonsai project on October 19th. ProjectBonsai is an artificial intelligence development platform used to build automation systems for industrial purposes. Both projects are considered part of Microsoft's "industrial metaverse".

According to insiders, Microsoft acquired artificial intelligence startup Bonsai in 2018, which was previously considered a response by the company to Google's acquisition of Deepmind. Project Airsim was initially launched as an open source project in 2017, but later shifted its focus to products targeting industrial customers.

Both ProjectAirsim and ProjectBonsai were founded by Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer. He has facilitated a partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI, incubating these two projects with the aim of enabling industrial customers to use new products from Microsoft's cloud business.

According to people familiar with the project, Nadella talked about ProjectBonsai in the same way he talked about OpenAI today, mentioning it as part of Microsoft's future in artificial intelligence during employee meetings and public interviews.

This insider said that although Microsoft initially viewed these projects as a means to attract industrial application developers, helping Microsoft's Azure cloud compete with Amazon's network service AWS. But as Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI continues to strengthen, Scott's interest in these projects is decreasing.

In early 2023, around the time Microsoft announced its expansion of partnership with OpenAI, the company also began to promote its vision of an industrial metaverse. But for related projects, the good times were not long. This spring, Microsoft terminated Project Bonsai and laid off the 100 person team responsible for the project, which was only a few months before Microsoft formed a team.

The insider said that Microsoft retained Project Airsim at the time because they believed that this incubated product had a large number of potential customers.

Former Vice President of Microsoft, Gurdeep Pall, previously served as the Director of Product Incubation and Business Artificial Intelligence, responsible for Project Bonsai, and most recently, Project Airsim. Last month, he resigned from Microsoft after working for 33 years.

Terminating ProjectAirsim is another example of Microsoft transferring resources to OpenAI. Last month, it was reported that Microsoft has abandoned experimental products such as Surface headphones and focused on investing in artificial intelligence. (Chen Chen)