Microsoft Bets on In-House AI to Cut OpenAI and Anthropic Costs

Microsoft Corp. NASDAQ: MSFT has taken steps to lessen its reliance on frontier AI models, though it's not an outright declaration of protest. In June, the tech giant launched its own proprietary AI models (Microsoft AI or MAI) across select applications in its Office suite. What this means for the user experience is an open question, but this is a clear margin play for Microsoft. The company competes in multiple areas of the AI infrastructure buildout. In a way that makes this move about controlling the controllables. Get Microsoft alerts: Sign Up Instead of experiencing death by a thousand cuts from OpenAI and Anthropic (i.e., the frontier models), Microsoft is trying to widen its existing moat and deliver strong returns on investment (ROI) from its AI spend. But will this be sufficient to alter the sentiment towards MSFT, which has declined approximately 20% year-to-date? Microsoft Expands MAI to Reduce Reliance on OpenAI Here's the news behind the news. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft is quietly routing some Excel and Outlook prompts to MAI, its in-house model family, rather than to OpenAI or Anthropic. Tens of thousands...