Perplexity AI Signs $750M Microsoft Azure Deal

Perplexity AI, an AI startup, has signed a three-year, $750 million agreement with Microsoft to utilize its Azure cloud service. This deal enables Perplexity AI to deploy AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Xai through Microsoft's Foundry service. Despite this new partnership, Perplexity AI has stated that Amazon.com===Amazon Web Services remains its preferred cloud infrastructure provider, with plans for future expansions. This move highlights a growing trend among companies to adopt multi-cloud strategies to access diverse services and mitigate reliance on a single vendor. The agreement also comes amidst a legal dispute between Amazon (company) and Perplexity AI regarding the latter's 'agentic' shopping feature. For Microsoft, the deal strengthens its position in the AI cloud market, while for Perplexity AI, it diversifies its infrastructure and access to frontier AI models.