Microsoft is following in the footsteps of its rivals and jumping into the production of homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors for its cloud infrastructure. The company also announced new software that lets clients design their own AI assistants.

The two new chips are named Azure Maia 100 and Cobalt 100.

The company said it has no plans to sell the chips, which it intends to use to power its own subscription software offerings and as part of its Azure cloud computing service. The two models are expected to debut in some Microsoft data centres at the start of 2024.

The Maia 100 chip is said to provide Microsoft Azure cloud customers with a new way to develop and run large language models that power AI applications. The company is already testing the chip with its Bing and Office AI products, and Microsoft’s main AI partner, ChatGPT creator OpenAI, is also testing the processor.

“Microsoft is building the infrastructure to support AI innovation...