Inflection Caps Pi After Microsoft Hires Founders

Inflection will restrict free access to its AI chatbot Pi in the coming months and introduce conversation export options as the new CEO directs the company’s focus toward enterprise solutions

The utilization caps were implemented just one year after Inflection raised $1.3 billion to develop the “emotionally intelligent” AI chatbot.

Five months ago, Microsoft, one of the primary investors in the deal, hired away Inflection’s founders and most of its staff. In exchange for licensing its AI model and repaying investors, Microsoft paid $650 million. At that time, Inflection reported that Pi had millions of weekly users.

The antitrust regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom investigated whether Microsoft was anti-competitive when it effectively consumed Inflection alive. As a result, this agreement has garnered attention.

CEO Sean White has since guided the dismantled startup through this challenging post-acqui-hire phase.

An Inflection spokesperson informed TechCrunch two weeks ago that the company was contemplating the sunsetting of Pi. This decision is logical, given that Inflection is facing a more significant resource constraint than it was in the past.

White informed TechCrunch,” We must exercise extreme caution when allocating our resources”

Those plans have since been modified, and White now asserts that the company is dedicated to maintaining the viability of consumer Pi.

Nevertheless, Inflection intends to alleviate the burden on its GPU resources by implementing utilization caps on the free chatbot.

According to Inflection, this measure will primarily impact power users. A spokesperson informed TechCrunch that the””exact limits are still being determine”” concerning the specifics of those limitations.

Inflection also allows users to transfer any significant conversations with Pi from the chatbot. It collaborates with the Data Transfers Initiative to enable users to export their conversations from Pi or transfer them from other chatbots.

White believes that Inflection is establishing a new standard for the AI industry regarding data mobility and transferability, and he is optimistic that other companies will follow suit.

Users cannot migrate their conversations with Pi to ChatGPT or any other chatbots, as Inflection is the first to make such a move. However, they can remove them from Pi.

Inflection’s future may involve licensing AI models to corporations for integration into their systems. According to White, 13,000 organizations have submitted an application indicating their interest in obtaining API access to Pi.

“To be frank, we cannot accommodate 13,000 requests due to a lack of resources. Consequently, we have been forced to exercise caution when selecting partners,” stated White.

He also stated that the organization has engaged in discussions with numerous Fortune 500 companies, insurers, and significant banks regarding the potential application of its enterprise products.

White asserts that Inflection’s fine-tuning infrastructure enables it to customize AI models more effectively to specific organizations than its competitors. He intends to disclose the initial enterprise products and partnerships in the autumn.