- Microsoft unveiled the Azure Maia 300, its third custom AI chip, and plans to run most of its AI services on its own silicon from 2027 to cut costs and reduce dependence on Nvidia and AMD.
- The company claims the chip delivers 40% more output per unit of power than leading GPU systems.
- Microsoft is one of Nvidia’s largest buyers, and a shift in-house, however gradual, could reshape the economics of the AI chip market.
Microsoft is stepping up its push into custom AI chips with the launch of Azure Maia 300, its third-generation processor, as it looks to move most of its AI workloads to the Maia platform from 2027 and cut its reliance on Nvidia and AMD.
Microsoft unveiled the chip at the OCP Global Summit 2026 in San Jose, calling it a key part of the AI inference infrastructure behind its products and services.
Microsoft says Maia 300 can process 40% more tokens per megawatt than leading GPU systems, according to Yahoo Finance. The claim puts the chip in direct competition with Nvidia, whose GPUs dominate the market. In simple terms, it means Maia 300 can handle more AI workloads using the same amount of power.
Microsoft says a rack equipped with 96 of the new chips can deliver up to seven times the throughput of one running the previous-generation Maia 200. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the chip as “our biggest bet yet on our own silicon” in a post on X.
Today we are announcing our biggest bet yet on our own silicon.
Starting next calendar year, we will scale our Maia family to multi-gigawatt deployments, making it the primary inference system for our own product and services.
And we’re introducing Maia 300, which delivers 40% more tokens per watt compared to leading GPU-based systems.
We are already deploying Maia 200 across the US, Europe, and Australia, delivering up to 1.7x more tokens per watt across experiences in Teams and Copilot.
Our goal is to build on the full-stack efficiency gains we’ve already seen, while continuing to bring the latest innovations from across the ecosystem into our fleet.
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) October 12, 2026
Maia 200 already runs Copilot, launch spreading
Yahoo Finance reported that Microsoft’s Maia 200 chip runs Microsoft 365 Copilot and supports a range of AI models, including those from OpenAI, Microsoft’s own MAI family and other open-source developers. The tech giant says the chip can process 1.7 times more tokens per watt than rival GPU systems when running Teams, Copilot and Cowork.
Microsoft announced its first Maia chip in 2023, but delays pushed the launch of Maia 200 to January 2026. By this summer, it was running in just two US data centers, The Information reported. Microsoft is expanding Maia 200 across its data centers in the US, Europe and Australia, with GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Foundry also expected to run on the chip before the end of the year.
Billions in savings, and a scramble to catch up
GeekWire reported the shift could save Microsoft billions and ease its reliance on Nvidia, while more efficient chips could also also cut electricity draw at a moment when power supply is one of the tightest constraints on all forms of AI expansion.
Evercore ISI analysts estimate Maia will make up about 10% of Microsoft’s AI chip spending by early 2027, according to CNBC.
Microsoft is also entering the custom AI chip market well after several rivals have already made progress. Google is selling its Tensor Processing Units to external customers, while Amazon’s Trainium chips have attracted AI companies such as Anthropic. Meta has also shipped its own chip designs, and OpenAI unveiled its first custom chip, developed with Broadcom, in June. Maia, by contrast, stays completely in-house and cannot be rented by any third parties.
Microsoft’s push to develop its own chips could have implications for Nvidia, which gets more than half of its quarterly revenue from hyperscalers, according to Yahoo Finance. The two companies continue to work together, though, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holding a joint appearance last week to unveil Nvidia-powered Windows PCs.
The tech giant has also said it will be among the first cloud providers to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin and AMD’s Helios systems. Microsoft also plans to share further details at its Ignite conference in San Francisco next month.
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Opeyemi Olanrewaju
Opeyemi specializes in creating and refining high-quality content focused on cryptocurrency, global financial markets and the economy. He graduated from the University of Ibadan with an MBBS degree. He has worked as Editor-in-Chief for his College’s editorial publication and previously at CFA. For over six years, he has helped safeguard uniqueness as news editor at Cryptopolitan.
