By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – Microsoft said on Tuesday that Coca-Cola had signed a $1.1 billion five-year deal to use its cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
Under the agreement, Microsoft and Coca-Cola will “jointly experiment” with Azure OpenAI. That service uses technology from Microsoft-backed startup and ChatGPT creator OpenAI to let customers build chatbots and other AI services that run in Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.
Coca-Cola had in 2020 signed a five-year deal worth $250 million to use Microsoft’s cloud and business software.
The two companies said Coca-Cola would test Microsoft’s Copilot offerings to see how the tools improve productivity for the beverage maker. Copilot is an AI assistant that can help summarize lengthy email discussions and build slide decks for business presentations, among its many functions.
The deal announced Wednesday also includes Coca-Cola expanding its use of other, conventional Microsoft software such as Dynamics 365, which is used by sales professionals and competes against Salesforce.
Microsoft did not specify the financial breakdown of the $1.1 billion Coca-Cola deal in terms of the dollar amount attributable to AI services versus traditional cloud software.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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