(Reuters) -Microsoft is getting ready to host Elon Musk’s Grok AI model, The Verge reported on Thursday citing a source familiar with the plans.
The tech giant has been in discussions with Musk’s AI startup xAI in recent weeks to host the Grok model and make it available to customers, as well as Microsoft’s own product teams through its Azure cloud service, the report said.
Grok will be available on Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft’s platform for developers that provides access to AI tools and models that help them host, run and manage AI-driven applications, according to the report.
Microsoft and xAI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for a comment.
Tensions have escalated between Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker and Microsoft partner OpenAI, and Musk – an OpenAI co-founder who left the startup in 2018 before its explosive growth.
The pair is in a feud over OpenAI’s future. Musk had sued OpenAI and Altman last year, alleging they had abandoned the startup’s original goal of developing AI for the benefit of humanity — not corporate gain.
OpenAI counter-sued Musk last month.
Microsoft is looking at only providing capacity to host the Grok model, and not the servers for training future models, the report said.
It was unclear if Microsoft will strike an exclusive deal on hosting the Grok AI model, or whether other cloud providers such as Amazon’s AWS will also be able to host the model, The Verge added.
Microsoft has been developing in-house AI reasoning models to reduce its reliance on OpenAI and had begun testing out models from xAI, Meta and China’s DeepSeek as potential replacements in its Copilot AI assistant, The Information had reported in March.
Microsoft made DeepSeek’s R1 model available on its Azure platform and GitHub tool for developers weeks after it surged in popularity.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
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