Microsoft is accelerating its push to compete with its longtime collaborator, Openai, by developing its own powerful AI models and exploring alternatives to power products like Microsoft’s Copilot Bot.
Microsoft has developed its own AI “inference” model that rivals models such as Openai’s O1 and O3-Mini. Openai is said to have rejected Microsoft’s request for technical details about how O1 works – taking away tensions between businesses.
Microsoft is also developing a family of models with Openai itself called competitive MAI, and according to Bloomberg, it is reportedly considering offering it through the API later this year. In parallel with these efforts, Microsoft is said to be testing alternative AI models from Xai, Meta, humanity and Deepseek as possible alternatives to Copilot’s Openai technology.
Having invested around $14 billion in Openai so far, Microsoft is considering hedging bets in a variety of ways, including hiring DeepMind and Fehfenct co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead Tech Giant’s AI efforts.