01:51 PM EDT, 05/19/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Microsoft ( MSFT ) plans to offer xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models on its Azure AI Foundry cloud service and new tools for evaluating AI models.

More than 1,900 are available to developers, and the Model Route tool is "designed to select an optimal model for a specific query or task" in real time, Microsoft ( MSFT ) said Monday in a blog post.

Models from European startups Mistral and Black Forest Labs, along with xAI, owned by Elon Musk, will be offered by Microsoft ( MSFT ), Reuters reported Monday, citing Asha Sharma, corporate vice president for product of Microsoft AI platforms at the Build conference in Seattle.

Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models will be hosted and billed directly by Microsoft ( MSFT ), according to the blog post.

Developers using the Azure AI Foundry platform would be able to purchase xAI's latest Grok models under the same terms as purchases of licenses for Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed ChatGPT OpenAI's equivalent products, the Financial Times reported Monday.

"What we're trying to do is simplify the purchasing experience for customers and the user experience to make it look more like [what] we do for the OpenAI models," said Eric Boyd, corporate vice president of Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Azure AI Platform, according to the Financial Times.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) is also offering a Model Leaderboard tool, which will rank top-performing AI models by task, according to the blog post.

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