“These models will have all the service level agreements (SLAs) Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,” says Microsoft. The Grok AI models will be hosted and billed directly by Microsoft, and offered to its own product teams and customers through its Azure AI Foundry service.

Starting this week, users of Azure AI Foundry will be able to purchase licences for xAI’s models under the same commercial terms as OpenAI’s — including premium access to cloud computing power and integration into Microsoft’s enterprise tools. This development gives developers “service parity” whether they choose Musk’s models or those from OpenAI.