“Remember this was a nonprofit, and I think Bill [Gates] even said, ‘Yeah, you’re going to burn this billion dollars,’” Nadella said.
Yet, Nadella and the Microsoft team weren’t swayed by the pushback. While Nadella noted that he needed to go through the proper channels and get board approval because of the size of the investment, he said despite the risk, “it was not that hard to convince anyone that this is an important area.”
“We kind of had a little bit of high risk tolerance, and we said we want to go and give this a shot,” he added.
“In retrospect, who would have thought? I didn’t put in a billion dollars saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be a hundred bagger,’” he said.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite his initial hesitancy, Gates later found himself impressed by AI and its rapid development over just a few years.
“There will be some things we reserve for ourselves,” he said. “But in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems.”
