The company unveiled its third-generation Maia AI accelerator on Monday and said it will mainly rely on its own silicon to handle incoming requests. The company aims to deploy multiple gigawatts of Maia chips, though Nvidia remains part of the plan, especially for training models.
After years of reliance on Nvidia's graphics processing units, Microsoft will ramp up use of its homegrown AI chips. Starting with the Maia 300, unveiled on Monday, the company said it will mainly use its own silicon to handle incoming requests.
Maia 300 packs more chips per rack
Production of the Maia 300 starts in 2027. Microsoft is targeting multi-gigawatt deployments of chips in the Maia family, according to a blog post from Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie. However, general manager Alistair Speirs declined to provide a timeline.
The company expects to pack 96 Maia 300 chips into each data center rack, double the number for the Maia 200. The new version can run through up to seven times more AI tokens per rack, with 40% more tokens per megawatt when compared with GPUs.
Nadella cites 30% better performance per dollar for Maia 200
In 2023, Microsoft introduced the Maia 100 and touted the Maia 200 in January. CEO Satya Nadella told analysts in July that the Maia 200 delivers 30% better performance per dollar than the latest generation hardware in the company's fleet, and said it was handling OpenAI models.
Finance chief Amy Hood said at a Goldman Sachs conference last month that use of Microsoft's own chips has helped with margin improvement over the course of a decade.
Nvidia stays in the picture
Nvidia will still be a big part of the equation. When it comes to training models, Microsoft partners with Nvidia and AMD, Speirs said.
Evercore ISI analysts estimated in a note to clients that Maia will represent about 10% of Microsoft's spending on AI chips by the first quarter of 2027. The analysts recommend buying Microsoft shares.
Unlike Google's tensor processing units or Amazon's Inferentia and Trainium, Microsoft's accelerators can't be rented by the hour to other companies. According to Moor Insights and Strategy CEO Patrick Moorhead: "Nobody has tested them outside of Microsoft yet."
Source: CNBC
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