Microsoft accelerates the deployment of Azure, preparing for OpenAI GPT-5 and GPT-4.5 release in May

According to foreign media reports, people familiar with the matter revealed that Microsoft's engineer team is accelerating the deployment of server resources to make technical reserves for OpenAI's upcoming GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models. Although OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently confirmed that GPT-4.5 will debut in a few weeks, Microsoft internally expects to complete hosting deployment of new models as early as next week, an action that hints at the generative AI field The technical competition has entered the sprint stage.

GPT-4.5, codenamed Orion, is regarded as the "final work" of the current technical route. Although OpenAI has not disclosed its specific performance parameters, internal testing shows that the model has significantly improved multimodal task processing and context coherence compared with previous generations.

It is worth noting that GPT-4.5 is still based on the traditional "thinking chain" architecture, which means that its logical reasoning capabilities have not yet achieved a fundamental breakthrough. However, the real focus is on the GPT-5, a model Altman calls "integrating many of our core technologies" and is expected to be officially launched in late May. GPT-5 will be equipped with the o3 inference model for the first time. The technology caused controversy over the "AI self-improvement" experiment during Christmas last year, which may bring qualitative changes in solving complex problems and long-term memory.

According to sources, the development cycle of GPT-5 has been repeated compared with the original plan. Previously, OpenAI announced that it would launch GPT-2024 (probably the GPT-5 codename) by the end of 2024, but it was postponed to early 2025 due to technical bottlenecks. Microsoft's early deployment of servers is not only to deal with the rapid launch of GPT-4.5, but also to gain a time window for the large-scale training and deployment of GPT-5. As OpenAI's main cloud service partner, Microsoft's Azure computing power cluster not only provides underlying support for the GPT series, but also consolidates the strategic binding between the two parties through technical collaboration.

Industry analysts pointed out that if GPT-5 can be launched as scheduled, its multimodal interaction capabilities and autonomous learning characteristics may redefine the role boundaries of AI assistants. Microsoft's advance layout on the server side also reflects the sharp growth trend of technology giants' demand for AI computing power. With the continuous breakthrough of generative AI technology, this computing power arms race led by Microsoft and OpenAI is quietly reshaping the competitive landscape of the global AI industry.