Microsoft has signed a $750 million cloud contract with AI startup Perplexity. With this agreement, Perplexity has made a conscious decision to broaden its cloud strategy, alongside its long-term partnership with Amazon Web Services.
According to Bloomberg, the deal has a three-year term and centers on using Microsoft’s Azure platform and the Foundry service to roll out AI models.
Through Foundry, Perplexity will have access to a wide range of so-called frontier models, including technology from OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. This will allow the company to develop and deploy its AI services more flexibly without being dependent on a single model supplier or cloud platform. According to Perplexity, this step aligns with its ambition to offer users more choice and technological depth.
AWS remains key cloud partner
However, the collaboration with Microsoft does not mean a departure from Amazon Web Services. Perplexity emphasizes that AWS will remain its most important cloud partner for the time being and that the existing infrastructure there will continue unchanged. The company even expects to further expand its collaboration with Amazon. In practice, Perplexity is opting for a multicloud strategy, something that is becoming increasingly common among fast-growing AI companies.
This strategy is striking against the backdrop of the legal tensions between Perplexity and Amazon. In November, Amazon filed a lawsuit to prevent Perplexity from using its AI technology for shopping functionalities that compete with Amazon’s own platform. At the time, Perplexity called this move an attempt to limit innovation and freedom of choice. At the same time, the company said it had already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to AWS services.
Azure as a platform for AI development
For Microsoft, the agreement with Perplexity is a new step in positioning Azure as the central platform for AI development. The company is emphatically committed to offering multiple AI models within a single ecosystem, so that customers can choose the technology that best suits each application. Microsoft has been working closely with OpenAI for some time and recently signed an agreement with Anthropic.
According to Microsoft, Foundry usage is growing rapidly, both in customer numbers and spending. More and more organizations are combining multiple AI models within their workloads and spending significant amounts on cloud infrastructure. The deal with Perplexity underscores this trend and shows that competition between cloud providers is increasingly focused on AI services.
Perplexity is one of the higher-valued AI startups, but it operates in a market where competitors such as Google and OpenAI have significantly more capital at their disposal. By working with multiple cloud and model partners, the company is trying to strengthen its technological position without committing to a single ecosystem. The deal thus reflects a broader movement in the AI market, in which flexibility and choice are becoming increasingly important.