In today’s Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Minute, I break down Microsoft’s rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra in Foundry and why enterprise controls could be a major differentiator for agentic AI.
Highlights
00:09 — So a quick recap before I get into this story: at the start of September, OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, which it described as the world’s most intelligent and aligned model. Now, I’d urge you to check out the promotional video that accompanied that launch, because it’s pretty mind-blowing in terms of what this model can do.
00:31 — It’s been a shift away from Q&A or chat and into actions. So, we’re talking computer use, software engineering, browsing, and so on. Now, the reason we’re talking about this today is that shortly after launch, Microsoft announced that it had made this frontier model generally available for all customers in Microsoft Foundry.
00:53 — Now, in practice, this means that customers can use the model to complete multi-step, agentic work with open-ended goals. Microsoft is really pushing the idea of computer use and how transformative this can be for its enterprise clients.
01:09 — And the model is pricey, with the standard global tier starting at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, short context. Long context is $20 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens.
02:29 — Foundry complements OpenAI’s safety alignment and other factors with security, safety, and compliance capabilities, including Microsoft Entra identity and access management, encryption in transit and at rest, private networking options, role-based access controls, content filtering, safety evaluations, monitoring, and, of course, governance tools. And that is what I think will draw people to Microsoft in this case.
