Microsoft may partner with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI's 'Enemy No. 1', Elon Musk and what makes this important

Microsoft may reportedly be planning to tie-up with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI's 'biggest enemy', or should we say 'Enemy No. 1', Elon Musk. According to a report in The Verge, "Microsoft has been instructing engineers working on its AI infrastructure to get ready to host Elon Musk’s Grok AI model." The report quotes a trusted source familiar with the plans. "In recent weeks Microsoft has been in discussions with xAI to host the Grok AI model and make it available to customers and Microsoft’s own product teams through the Azure cloud service," the report adds.

Little doubt, the partnership is likely to not go well with Microsoft's closest ally ChatGPT maker OpenAI that went to court late last month against Elon Musk. The ChatGPT maker's lawyers argue that “Musk’s continued attacks on OpenAI, culminating most recently in the fake takeover bid designed to disrupt OpenAI’s future, must cease. Musk should be enjoined from further unlawful and unfair action, and held responsible for the damage he has already caused.”
Elon Musk and OpenAI have been in a rather public spat. In early 2024, Elon Musk sued the company claiming that OpenAI is using GPT-4 to ‘maximize profits’ instead of ‘for the benefit of humanity.’ Elon Musk helped co-found OpenAI in 2015 but no longer holds a stake in the company.

Microsoft is reportedly considering limiting its involvement with Elon Musk's xAI to hosting the existing Grok AI model on its Azure AI Foundry platform, rather than providing the extensive server capacity required for training future, more advanced iterations. This development, as reported, suggests a potential shift in Microsoft's strategy towards xAI, even as it makes the current Grok model accessible to developers through its Azure AI infrastructure.
Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft's platform designed to empower developers with AI tools and models for building and managing AI-powered applications, is slated to host Grok. This would allow developers utilizing Azure to leverage Grok's capabilities within their own projects.
The report from The Verge raises questions about the exclusivity of this hosting arrangement, leaving it unclear whether other major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), might also gain the ability to host the Grok model.
This potential limitation on providing training infrastructure for future Grok models comes amidst reports of Microsoft actively exploring alternatives to its close partnership with OpenAI. As previously reported by The Information in March, Microsoft has been developing its own in-house AI reasoning models and has been evaluating models from xAI itself, Meta, and China's DeepSeek as potential enhancements or replacements for OpenAI's technology within its Copilot AI assistant.
Notably, Microsoft recently made DeepSeek's R1 model available on its Azure platform and GitHub for developers, capitalizing on the model's growing popularity. This move further underscores Microsoft's apparent interest in diversifying its AI model portfolio and potentially reducing its reliance on any single external provider.