Perplexity Said to Sign $750 Million Microsoft Azure Deal to Run AI Models via Foundry

AI startup Perplexity has signed a $750 million agreement with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud service, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal runs for three years and would let Nvidia-backed Perplexity run a range of AI models through Microsoft’s Foundry program, including systems from OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, the report said.

Microsoft has confirmed the partnership in a statement to Reuters, but did not disclose financial terms. “Perplexity has chosen Microsoft Foundry as its primary AI platform for model sourcing under a new multi-year agreement,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters. Perplexity did not respond to a Reuters request for comment, according to the same report.

Bloomberg quoted a Perplexity spokesperson as saying the company is partnering with Microsoft for “access to frontier models from X, OpenAI and Anthropic.” The spokesperson also said Perplexity has not shifted spending away from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which remains its main cloud provider, as part of the Microsoft agreement.

The arrangement highlights how fast-growing AI companies are increasingly building multi-cloud strategies, both for reliability and for access to different model ecosystems, rather than relying on a single infrastructure vendor. For Microsoft, the deal adds another high-profile AI customer to Azure as the company pushes Foundry as a hub where developers can deploy models from multiple providers, not only Microsoft’s close partner OpenAI.

The Microsoft partnership also comes against the backdrop of a legal fight involving Perplexity and Amazon. Last year, Amazon sued Perplexity over the startup’s “agentic” shopping feature, which automates online purchases for users. Amazon alleged that Perplexity covertly accessed Amazon customer accounts and disguised automated activity as human browsing, Reuters reported at the time.

While the cloud agreement does not resolve that dispute, it underlines Perplexity’s attempt to keep expanding its infrastructure options even as scrutiny grows around AI “agents” that can take actions on users’ behalf across third-party websites.

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