Microsoft’s bold AI expansion
Microsoft is doubling down on artificial intelligence by offering competitive AI models in its Azure data centers and launching a powerful AI coding agent. This strategic move strengthens Microsoft’s position in the AI race, giving developers and enterprises more options beyond Open AI’ models.
SEATTLE: Microsoft said Monday it will offer new AI models created by Elon Musk’s xAI, Meta Platforms and European companies Mistral and Black Forest Labs housed in its own data centers, and unveiled a new artificial-intelligence tool to automate software coding.
The announcements, made at Microsoft’s main Build software developer conference in Seattle, Washington, underscored the changing dynamics between OpenAI and Microsoft, which has funded OpenAI and last week revealed a directly competing product.
Microsoft just sat back and decided to be a less political player in the AI race, less willing to write huge checks to underwrite OpenAI’s research ambitions and also to ally with more AI players, all in an effort to increase sales without revealing the costs.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that the new xAI, Meta, and others’ products will be made available with the same reliability promises that are tied to OpenAI models on Microsoft.
That’s just a game-changer in terms of what you have to think about with models and model provisioning,” Nadella told conference-goers in a keynote. “It’s fun for us as developers to be able to mix and match and use them all.
Microsoft’s newly released GitHub Copilot option is a so-called code agent, an AI tool that can be programmed and that’s meant to help developers write code. While previous versions of Microsoft AI code tools could generate chunks of code automatically as a developer is already developing something, the agent’s job is much greater.
How does it compare to GitHub Copilot?
| Feature | Microsoft’s AI Coding Agent | GitHub Copilot |
| Integration | Deep Azure & VS Code support | GitHub-focused |
| AI Models Used | Multiple (xAI, Mistral, etc.) | OpenAI’s models |
| Enterprise Features | Advanced security & compliance | Basic GitHub integration |
| Pricing | Likely bundled with Azure | Standalone subscription |
The agent will have a few instructions provided by a human – such as a description of a buggy piece of software and a blueprint of how to fix it – and then leave it to it, alerting the human to review its handiwork when it has finished typing out code.
OpenAI just launched a preview of yet another agent it calls Codex. In a presentation at the Build conference on Monday, Microsoft outlined a vision for a future in which companies will build their own agents for various activities in a company. Its flagship product in that area goes by the name of Azure Foundry – a service for building companies’ own agents from the AI model of their choice.
Microsoft’s VP Asha Sharma told Reuters that various AI models can be used to create these agents.
Microsoft on Monday said that it will add xAI’s Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models to its cloud services, in addition to Meta’s Llama models and from French startup Mistral and the German startup Black Forest Labs have added their models to Azure which can be counted as 1900 models in numbers.
These models will run on Microsoft’s data centers, so Microsoft can ensure they are available, even when demand is high and other models often face outages. Sharma wrote that Microsoft will begin offering more hot models in the near future.
One of the most important pieces to be able to build an app and be able to utilize the most sought-after models smoothly is making sure your reserved capacity you have with Azure OpenAI starts which work on models.
Microsoft also announced on Monday that it is working on a way of providing AI agents with the same kind of digital identity as human employees in a company’s networks.
The concept of calling treating agents virtual employees is the kind of revolutionary change that will open up some fantastic new opportunities but also instill fear about the impact that AI will be replacing Human Resourse.
