Microsoft focuses on AI profits at Build conference

At its annual Build developer conference in Seattle on May 19, 2025, Microsoft highlighted its push to monetize AI investments, having spent $64 billion this year on data centers for AI services such as Copilot. The company signaled a reworked relationship with OpenAI and said it will act as a neutral provider in the AI race by hosting xAI’s Grok chatbot models on its Azure cloud platform alongside competitors. CEO Satya Nadella argued that once algorithms are settled and optimized, Microsoft can achieve tenfold performance gains at the same computing cost, and demand for AI in Azure continues to grow. Analyst Thomas Blakey noted Microsoft’s strategy of keeping revenue-generating AI services in its own data centers while using neocloud providers for short-term capacity boosts. The conference was briefly disrupted by a protest over Microsoft’s work with the Israeli government.