Microsoft Azure's Undercover Battle Escalates: Preferring to Bring in Elon Musk's Grok 3 Rather Than Bowing to Google or Anthropic

TradingKey - Microsoft (MSFT) announced on Monday at the Build 2025 developer conference that it has integrated xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini large models into the Azure AI Foundry platform, making them available to developers and enterprise customers.

Microsoft stated that the Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models from xAI will be accessible on its Azure AI Foundry platform. These models also support chatbots for X, Elon Musk's social media platform, which has previously faced scrutiny over controversial content dissemination.

Additionally, Microsoft has incorporated models from European AI startups Mistral and BlackForestLabs into the Azure platform, further enriching its library of AI tools. The number of available models has now surpassed 1,900. Microsoft emphasized its commitment to continuously introducing popular models to meet the customized needs of enterprises.

Despite this integration of various models, Microsoft has not included those from competitors like Alphabet and Anthropic. Analysts note that by fostering an open ecosystem and integrating toolchains, Microsoft aims to establish a differentiated advantage in the AI infrastructure market; however, cross-platform compatibility remains a long-term challenge.