Microsoft said Monday it will offer artificial intelligence models developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, Meta Platforms, and European startups Mistral and Black Forest Labs, expanding its AI portfolio hosted in Microsoft’s own data centers.
The company also introduced a new AI coding tool that can independently complete software development tasks.
The announcements came at Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference in Seattle and signaled a shift in the company’s approach to AI partnerships. While maintaining its backing of OpenAI, Microsoft is working with a wider group of AI developers to broaden its offerings and manage costs.
The move comes just days after OpenAI revealed a competing AI agent product.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the new models, including xAI’s Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini, Meta’s Llama, and others, would be available to Azure cloud customers with the same service guarantees as OpenAI’s tools. “It’s exciting for us as developers to be able to mix and match and use them all,” Nadella said.
Microsoft’s updated GitHub Copilot, a coding agent, was also introduced. Unlike earlier versions that assisted developers by suggesting code snippets, the new tool can take high-level instructions, such as a bug description and fix strategy, and write the code independently. Developers are then prompted to review the results.
The company also launched Azure Foundry, a platform that allows businesses to build custom AI agents using a combination of models. Microsoft said it now offers more than 1,900 models on its Azure AI platform. These models will run directly in Microsoft data centers, giving the company control over their availability and performance.
Asha Sharma, corporate vice president for Microsoft AI platforms, said the company will continue adding more popular models and emphasized the importance of cross-model capacity for developers using Azure.
Additionally, Microsoft is creating digital identifiers for AI agents, allowing them to operate similarly to human employees within company systems.
