AI startup Perplexity has signed a $750 million, three-year agreement with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud services and run AI models through the company’s Foundry program, Bloomberg reported. The deal will give Perplexity access to frontier AI systems from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s xAI.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that Perplexity has chosen Foundry as its primary AI platform for sourcing models under the agreement. Perplexity has stated that it continues to use Amazon Web Services as its main cloud provider, and the Microsoft deal does not replace AWS spending.
The partnership allows Perplexity to run a range of AI models efficiently, leveraging Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure while maintaining flexibility across providers. Nvidia-backed Perplexity is known for its agentic AI features, including automating online shopping tasks. Last year, Amazon sued the startup, claiming that its agentic shopping tool covertly accessed customer accounts and disguised automated actions as human activity.
The agreement highlights Microsoft’s broader AI strategy, which includes hardware innovation such as the recently unveiled Maia 200 chip, developed with TSMC to power GPT-5.2 and Microsoft 365 Copilot, promising faster and more efficient AI performance across its cloud and enterprise offerings.
