Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry then supports Grok bots created by Elon Musk. Developers are now able to create, evaluation, and install software powered by Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini within the AI development program.
Microsoft will charge customers for their usage of the Grok models, starting at$ 3 per million input tokens and$ 15 per million output tokens, on its Azure cloud infrastructure. The Grok designs will be accessible for free to try up until the beginning of June, though.
The announcement was made at Microsoft’s Build designer conference on Monday, and it stands out given Microsoft’s collaboration with OpenAI. Musk founded xAI, the business that preceded Grok, but has since resigned from its table in the late 2010s due to disagreements over its leadership style.
Microsoft’s working partnership with Musk may stress its working partnership with OpenAI.
When the businessman claimed the firm had departed from its original purpose as a volunteer, a legal fight between Musk and OpenAI started in February 2024. In August 2024, Musk filed a modified grievance that reiterated the same fundamental claims.
An investment consortium led by Musk submitted a bid for a$ 97.4 billion acquisition offer for OpenAI in February 2025. The board of directors of OpenAI swiftly rejected the merger, which countersued in April, alleging that Musk’s request was a part of a wider campaign of intimidation to destroy the organization.
Observe: Volunteer Retain Controls, OpenAI Backtracks,
Microsoft has also increased its partnership with OpenAI, beginning in 2019 with a$ 1 billion investment in exchange for an exclusive license to market the core GPT models. With a multibillion dollar funding in OpenAI, which made Azure its unique cloud provider, this was extended in January 2023.
For its Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft is looking to partner with Artificial companies.
Redmond has been forging partnerships with many rivals, despite the fact that OpenAI may work specifically with Microsoft for cloud hosting and design licensing. Azure AI Foundry features plenty of base concepts from the likes of Meta, DeepSeek, NVIDIA, Cohere, and Hugging Face, and it has entered non-exclusive licensing agreements with Tone AI and Mistral AI. The more a business and developer are drawn to the software, the more the model selection is extensive.
Vaidyaraman Sambasivam, Azure AI’s spouse head of goods, stated in a blog post that the addition of xAI’s Grok 3 “underlines Microsoft’s commitment to help an empty, different AI habitat, rather than relying on a single unit provider. The addition of a new model, expanding the kit, and” Grok 3’s appearance on Azure AI Foundry Models” is a testament to that vision.
Microsoft also announced at the Build meeting that Windows 11 will then assist Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, an open-source standard for connecting AI programs to data libraries. Microsoft aims to transform the operating system into an “agentic” software, one where AI agents can assist people in carrying out tasks across programs, files, and services without needing human inputs.
Microsoft might start to regret the partnership due to Grok’s shaky reputation.
Not just because Microsoft has an unusual relationship with the Grok models, OpenAI and Musk compete against one another. Greco has received criticism for its subpar performance, which raises questions about its suitability for business use. Grok 3 generated inaccurate news citations in 94 % of cases, according to the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. It frequently gets itself into political hot water because it frequently refers to J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, and US President Donald Trump as misinformation spreaders.
Last week, Grok uninvitedly mentioned the” white genocide” in South Africa, which xAI attributed to an “unauthorized modification” of its system prompt. According to the Associated Press, Trump authorized the admission of dozens of white South African refugees after they were accused of racial discrimination and violence. The South African president said the move was based on a” completely false narrative.”
