Aptos Labs Inks Partnership Exploring Innovative Solutions with Microsoft

Multinational tech corporation Microsoft today announced a partnership with Aptos Labs, the development team behind scalability-focused independent layer 1 platform Aptos. The strategic collaboration will explore various shared areas of interests including virtual central bank-backed currencies (CBDCs), digital payments and tokenization.

Utilizing each other’s resources to support developers and users

Aptos Labs will leverage Microsoft’s Azure Open AI to facilitate the onboarding of new users. The team specifically plans to launch Aptos Assistant, a ‘user-friendly and secure’ chatbot with digital assistant service capabilities to provide solutions and resources in response to user inquiries about the blockchain and broader ecosystem.

“By fusing Aptos Labs’ technology with the Microsoft Azure Open AI Service capabilities, we aim to democratize the use of blockchain enabling users to seamlessly onboard to web3 and innovators to develop new exciting decentralized applications using AI.” Microsoft’s AI and emerging technologies GM, Rashmi Misra, remarked.

In addition to Aptos running validator nodes on Azure, the companies jointly conveyed that the partnership will focus primarily on Microsoft’s artificial intelligence infrastructure for development purposes.

Intersection of AI and blockchain

The partnership will also see GitHub add Aptos’ native programming language Move into its code auto-complete enabling model Copilot. Worth noting, Aptos Labs’ founding team is made of former Meta employees who previously contributed to now-dumped permissioned blockchain stablecoin payment project Diem.

“Aptos Labs’ team of AI experts, PhDs and Web3 developers are working directly with Microsoft […]. to train models, integrate AI technology into the Aptos Assistant and GitHub elements integrating with Aptos’ blockchain, and determine the best resources for developers and casual visitors who want to learn more about building on Aptos – or ask questions about the Aptos ecosystem, more broadly,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk.

Microsoft’s partnership with Aptos Labs adds to several of the tech giant’s initiatives in AI having earlier announced a massive investment to the tune of $10 billion into Open AI. Crunchbase previously reported that AI startups secured around $25 billion from venture capital firms and other investing entities in the first half of this year.

Aptos Labs chief, Mo Shaikh, also hailed the potential breakthroughs entailing a convergence of the two technologies which could ultimately influence the evolution of the internet.

“Together with Microsoft, our shared vision is to ensure that this technology is accessible to more people and organizations than ever before.” Shaikh said.

The latest display of AI and blockchain tech convergence strikes as an ambitious development and advancement from recently-announced integrations like deployment of Chat GPT-based chatbots on blockchain ecosystems.

APT price action as token unlock event nears

Aptos mainnet went live to a rocky start in October 2022 as the network struggled to attain its claimed throughput of up to 160,000 transactions per second. Still, it is among the fastest blockchains going by its < 1 second time-to-finality. Aptos’ native token APT posted double-digit gains setting a three-week high marginally below $8 minutes after the news of partnership before erasing some of the gains.

APT/USD August price chart

The APT/USD pair was at the time of writing trading above $7.30 – up 11% on the day. APT has in the last week been trading in a tight range around $6.70 ahead of its scheduled token unlock event on Friday that presents a potential selling pressure trigger. The upcoming event succeeding a previous one in July will similarly see around 4.5 million APT tokens (slightly over 2% of the circulating supply) distributed in two allocations – 3.21 million tokens to the community and 1.33 million tokens to the Foundation.

To learn more about Aptos, check out our Investing in Aptos guide.