Today at its Build developer conference, Microsoft confirmed that it is expanding its Azure AI Foundry lineup to include the Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini from xAI.
“These models will have all the service level agreements (SLAs) that Azure customers have come to expect from any Microsoft product,” Microsoft said. Grok AI models will be hosted and exposed directly by Microsoft, as well as offered to its own product teams and customers through the Azure AI Foundry service.
This unexpected addition could prove controversial within the company and further exacerbate tensions with Microsoft’s partner, OpenAI. Over the past year, Microsoft has been steadily growing its Azure AI Foundry business and rapidly adopting models from various AI labs that compete with its partner, OpenAI.
Sources say Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been pushing Microsoft to house Grok because he wants Microsoft to be seen as a hosting provider for any popular or emerging AI models. Grok is the latest model to join Azure AI Foundry, which is quickly becoming a key AI service for Microsoft as it seeks to be seen as a platform for hosting AI models for businesses and app developers.
The announcement of Grok joining Azure AI Foundry comes days after a chatbot spent hours telling every X user that the claim of white genocide in South Africa was highly controversial. xAI blamed the behavior on “unauthorized modification” of Grok’s code. xAI faced a similar challenge earlier this year, when the company accused an unnamed former OpenAI employee of making changes to Grok that caused it to ignore any sources accusing Elon Musk or Donald Trump of spreading misinformation.
Naturally, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was quick to mock Grok in a post last week. Earlier this month, OpenAI filed a countersuit against Musk, claiming that the Tesla boss was using “unfair tactics to slow down OpenAI.” Elon Musk and OpenAI have been locked in a legal dispute for months, after Musk parted ways with the artificial intelligence lab he co-founded nearly 10 years ago.
