# Microsoft's open-weight AI push is so obviously an Azure play it hurts

> Source: <https://the-decoder.com/microsofts-open-weight-ai-push-is-so-obviously-an-azure-play-it-hurts/>
> Published: 2026-07-24 16:06:02+00:00

Microsoft, along with Meta, Nvidia, and more than 20 other companies, is pushing for open-weight AI models in an open letter. The strategic logic is simple: the more models running on Azure, the less Microsoft depends on expensive OpenAI and Anthropic models. The company is also swapping external models in products like Copilot for its in-house MAI family, which performs significantly worse in independent benchmarks.

The article [Microsoft's open-weight AI push is so obviously an Azure play it hurts](https://the-decoder.com/microsofts-open-weight-ai-push-is-so-obviously-an-azure-play-it-hurts/) appeared first on [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com).