Microsoft to scale Azure Maia AI chip system to gigawatt-level deployment from 2027

Microsoft said it will expand deployment of its Azure Maia AI chip system to the gigawatt level starting in 2027, positioning Maia as the primary inference system for the company’s products and services. The company said Azure Maia 200 is already in production and is supporting products including Microsoft Copilot, while also helping the MAI team develop its next-generation models. Microsoft also outlined its next chip, Maia 300, which is scheduled for release in 2027. The system is being designed for newer AI workloads, including long-context reasoning, low-latency conversational use cases, and multi-step agentic tasks. According to Microsoft, Maia 300 is expected to process 40% more tokens per megawatt than leading GPU-based systems. In a full 96-accelerator configuration, Microsoft said rack-level token throughput could reach as much as seven times that of Maia 200. The details were disclosed in a Microsoft Blog post.