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

Microsoft, alongside Meta, Nvidia, and over 20 other companies, has issued an open letter advocating for open-weight AI models. The strategic rationale is straightforward: the more models operating on Azure, the less Microsoft relies on costly OpenAI and Anthropic models. Additionally, the company is replacing external models in products like Copilot with its in-house MAI family, which significantly underperforms in independent benchmarks.