Microsoft and Elon Musk’s startup xAI have reached a new agreement where Grok, the company’s chatbot, will be hosted on Azure. Just a few days before the announcement, Grok outraged many by promoting a “white genocide” theory in South Africa in reaction to unrelated events.
Musk talked at the Build conference about xAI, saying it works to be correct by making few errors and highlighting that AI should be realistic. He made it clear that Grok would be open about its mistakes and how it operates — perhaps a subtle reference to OpenAI, which is secretive and was co-founded by Musk.
The rest of the world was shocked by Grok when an editing mistake made the bot declare things that had no basis in fact.
Grok is now being offered at Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry, alongside some of the biggest generative AI tools from OpenAI, Meta, DeepSeek, Mistral, and Stability AI. The change shows that Microsoft is putting more resources into generative AI, and CEO Satya Nadella described it as an important step forward for programming. More than 15 million developers have already started using GitHub Copilot, a coding assistant from Microsoft.
Microsoft is partnering with xAI after undergoing a restructuring that saw up to 6,000 employee job cuts as it focuses more on AI.
Despite Musk’s friendly act at the Microsoft event, there are still arguments going on among experts in AI — especially between Musk and OpenAI. Nonetheless, the partnership of Grok and Azure points to another big change in the fast-changing world of AI.
