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OpenAI Five Defeats Humans, $20M Newell Support, Microsoft Compute

5/2/2026

Summary

OpenAI Five Beats Humans

OpenAI Five beat top human players in two of three 2018 exhibition matches, losing the third after a poor composition.
Gabe Newell contributed over $20 million and served as OpenAI’s sole informal advisory board member in 2018.
Elon Musk obtained discounted compute from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for the Dota project.
Shivon Zilis emailed Musk on April 23 2018 saying OpenAI’s Dota 5v5 progress was better than expected and could speed the AGI timeline.

Summary

OpenAI Five Dominates

The AI gave a 76 percent win probability in the draft, rising to 92 percent after an early lead.
It dove and attacked instantly but mishandled invisibility and placed wards poorly, a weakness OpenAI will fix.
In match two the AI timed a courier’s salve with frame-perfect precision, a micro-action beyond typical human skill.
OpenAI staff called the Dota project a stepping stone toward new “impossible-but-not-too-impossible” challenges on the path to AGI.

History

Historical Context

After decades of computer-chess research—from the 1968 David Levy bet to Carnegie Mellon’s Deep Thought beating grandmasters in the late 1980s—IBM upgraded its machine, and in May 1997 Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov 3½–2½, evaluating about 200 million positions per second. The win spurred later breakthroughs such as AlphaGo’s 2016 victories in the field of AI.

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OpenAI Five Beats Humans

OpenAI Five beat top human players in two of three 2018 exhibition matches, losing the third after a poor composition.
Gabe Newell contributed over $20 million and served as OpenAI’s sole informal advisory board member in 2018.
Elon Musk obtained discounted compute from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for the Dota project.
Shivon Zilis emailed Musk on April 23 2018 saying OpenAI’s Dota 5v5 progress was better than expected and could speed the AGI timeline.

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