By Deepa Seetharaman, Milana Vinn and Kenrick Cai
Publication Date: 2026-05-13 20:14:00
By Deepa Seetharaman, Milana Vinn and Kenrick Cai
SAN FRANCISCO / NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) – Microsoft is shopping for artificial-intelligence startups as the software company prepares for a future independent of its once-vital partner OpenAI, five people familiar with the matter said.
The potential acquisitions could help the company stock up on AI talent and deliver on its stated goal of building a cutting-edge AI model by next year, three of the people said.
This spring, Microsoft weighed acquiring code-generation startup Cursor, four people said. But Microsoft backed away due to internal concerns that such a deal would not pass regulatory scrutiny, given Microsoft’s ownership of GitHub Copilot, three of the people said.
Microsoft is in discussions with Inception, a small startup built by a Stanford University team focused on a different method of developing large language models, three people familiar with the matter said. Inception was founded in…