News Microsoft's own AI chip delayed six months in major setback — in-house chip now reportedly expected in 2026, but won't hold a candle to Nvidia Blac...

[Admin]

A new report says Microsoft's in-house AI chip is delayed and won't be as good as Nvidia Blackwell when it finally does launch.

Microsoft's own AI chip delayed six months in major setback — in-house chip now reportedly expected in 2026, but won't hold a candle to Nvidia Blac... : Read more

 

[John Nemesh]

Whoever at MS thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. Why on EARTH would a software company start designing AI chips when they have ZERO experience with chip design???? Moronic.

 

[Notton]

I found the "high turnover rate" part hilarious.
That's the one thing you should never do when designing a chip from the ground up.
You only fire engineers after the product is complete, not before, lol.

 

[EzzyB]

Whoever at MS thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. Why on EARTH would a software company start designing AI chips when they have ZERO experience with chip design???? Moronic.

They already have their own ARM-based chips in production for their datacenters.

 

[John Nemesh]

They already have their own ARM-based chips in production for their datacenters.

Yeah, that's not at all similar. And modifying a LICENSED design and making tweaks isn't remotely the same as designing a new chip architecture from the ground up.

 

[Xaction]

Interesting reporting since the original date floated for these chips last year was 2026, not 2025

 

[phead128]

Whoever at MS thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. Why on EARTH would a software company start designing AI chips when they have ZERO experience with chip design???? Moronic.

Are you saying only hardware companies with chip manufacturing experience should design chips?

 

[alrighty_then]

MSFT stock down just 0.45% today...so this news is either inaccurate or no one cared. Meanwhile NVIDIA and MSFT continue to compete to be the most insanely profitable companies to invest in - and I'm loving it.

I was disappointed that MSFT did so well with the Surface line then stopped innovating, (to avoid competing with partners I suppose). Their hardware efforts are hit-and-miss but some of the hits are/were impressive (Xbox, Surface, HoloLens).

 

[Pierce2623]

They already have their own ARM-based chips in production for their datacenters.

Yeah but building a CPU with ARM cores is different from building an AI accelerator. Quite different.

 

[umeng2002_2]

The common denominator is people are tired of buying from nVidia™. How Nintendo is still doing business with them is beyond me.

 

[atmapuri]

If deepSeek has show that you can achieve a 10x speed up with software optimization, why are people so keen on making hardware?
Hardware development is projected to cost less than software optimization?

Or only programmers in China cost less?

 

[Stomx]

When top high tech companies try starting something not in their core business profile like making AI chips that tells us what all of them keeping tight mum about: they have done the research and discovered that the demand there is insanely high, the manufacturing cost is insanely low compared to insanely high price tag and the experienced personnel is abundant and readily available

 

[jp7189]

Whoever at MS thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. Why on EARTH would a software company start designing AI chips when they have ZERO experience with chip design???? Moronic.

Seems inline with their strategy to me. They have been transitioning from software to devices and services for over ten years now (started with Ballmer). They already design pretty much all the rest of the hardware platform in their datacenter, and are significant contributors to OCP. It makes sense they would explore making the chips themselves, and focus first on the areas where vendors are charging them insane markup.

They also design their own quantum processors.

 

[BwwwJ1st]

MSFT stock down just 0.45% today...so this news is either inaccurate or no one cared. Meanwhile NVIDIA and MSFT continue to compete to be the most insanely profitable companies to invest in - and I'm loving it.

I was disappointed that MSFT did so well with the Surface line then stopped innovating, (to avoid competing with partners I suppose). Their hardware efforts are hit-and-miss but some of the hits are/were impressive (Xbox, Surface, HoloLens).

And Windows phone was a huge missed opportunity, not executed well, especially after buying Lumina.

 

[derekullo]

Whoever at MS thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. Why on EARTH would a software company start designing AI chips when they have ZERO experience with chip design???? Moronic.

I'm sure it went down something like this ...

We already partner/own a company training the models, forced copilot down the throats of anyone using Office 365 and made a special button on the keyboard just to instantly pull up copilot.

But we still have tons of cash and we need to quadruple down on AI!

Nvidia is getting all the money and news ... lets do what they do!

 

[toffty]

Whoever at MS thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. Why on EARTH would a software company start designing AI chips when they have ZERO experience with chip design???? Moronic.

You could say the same thing about Google, yet they have great AI chips specifically designed for their use cases.

When at the scale of Azure, it makes sense for MS to develop their own, specialized, chips as opposed to more general x64 / nvidia chips/cards

 

[John Nemesh]

You could say the same thing about Google, yet they have great AI chips specifically designed for their use cases.

When at the scale of Azure, it makes sense for MS to develop their own, specialized, chips as opposed to more general x64 / nvidia chips/cards

Sure it does. Keep thinking that as MS spirals around the drain.

 

[John Nemesh]

Seems inline with their strategy to me. They have been transitioning from software to devices and services for over ten years now (started with Ballmer). They already design pretty much all the rest of the hardware platform in their datacenter, and are significant contributors to OCP. It makes sense they would explore making the chips themselves, and focus first on the areas where vendors are charging them insane markup.

They also design their own quantum processors.

And yet, the only devices that have been at all profitable are their keyboards and mice...

Tech history is littered with their failures...Ultimate TV, Kin, Windows Phone, Xbox...but sure, THIS time will be different! Surely!

 

[jp7189]

And yet, the only devices that have been at all profitable are their keyboards and mice...

Tech history is littered with their failures...Ultimate TV, Kin, Windows Phone, Xbox...but sure, THIS time will be different! Surely!

Your right about their consumer retail products having a mixed history, but this article is about developing their own datacenter products that will never appear on Best Buy shelves.

 

[John Nemesh]

Your right about their consumer retail products having a mixed history, but this article is about developing their own datacenter products that will never appear on Best Buy shelves.

Regardless of whether it's used internally or sold as a product to customers, this will end up in the dustbin of tech history with their other failures.