Microsoft is ramping up its infrastructure capabilities to accommodate the latest versions of OpenAI’s large language models, with the first deployment expected by the end of February. Sources close to Microsoft revealed to The Verge‘s that the tech giant is poised to host OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 as early as next week.
OpenAI Gears Up for GPT-4.5 Release
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently confirmed the company’s plans to “next ship GPT-4.5,” though he did not specify an exact launch date. GPT-4.5 is regarded as a “mid-generation” update, designed to bridge the gap between GPT-4 and the upcoming GPT-5.
According to reports from The Information, OpenAI is using synthetic data to train GPT-4.5. Synthetic data, as noted by IBM, can effectively tackle data scarcity issues during AI model training and fine-tuning, potentially enhancing the model’s performance and capabilities.
Beyond the imminent release of GPT-4.5, sources suggest Microsoft anticipates the arrival of GPT-5 by late May. Altman described GPT-5 as “a system that integrates a lot of our technology, including o3,” referring to OpenAI’s latest reasoning model. A smaller variant, o3-mini, was introduced on January 31.
Strategic Partnership with Microsoft
Microsoft currently hosts OpenAI’s language models on its Azure cloud platform. However, the tech company clarified that Azure’s operations remain separate from OpenAI’s proprietary tools, including ChatGPT.
In a strategic move, Microsoft and OpenAI recently expanded their collaboration under US President Donald Trump’s $500 billion AI initiative, Stargate. Furthermore, OpenAI made a substantial commitment to Azure to support its entire product suite, including ongoing model training.
ChatGPT’s Explosive Growth and Competitive Pressures
Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has shattered records as the fastest-growing consumer software platform. By February 2025, it boasted approximately 400 million weekly active users—a 33% surge in less than three months, according to OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer, Brad Lightcap.
However, the competitive landscape is intensifying. The recent debut of DeepSeek, an open-source AI model developed in China at a fraction of ChatGPT’s cost, challenges the notion that OpenAI and the United States will maintain dominance in the global AI arena.
Recently, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, launched an early version of Grok-3 which outperformed AI models from OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek, securing the top rank in multiple categories.
According to xAI’s internal evaluation, Grok-3 scored at least 10 points higher than competitors such as ChatGPT o3mini, o1, DeepSeek-R1, and Gemini-2 Flash Thinking in key areas, including math, science, and coding. Additionally, LMArena reported that Grok-3 achieved the highest ranking across all measured categories, including instruction following, creative writing, and handling complex prompts.
