By Matt Day
Publication Date: 2026-01-26 18:39:00
Jan. 26, 2026, 1:39 p.m. ET
Microsoft Corp. is rolling out its second-generation artificial intelligence chip, the centerpiece of the company’s push to power its services more efficiently and provide an alternative to Nvidia Corp. hardware.
The Maia 200 chip, which is being produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is making its way to Microsoft data centers in Iowa, with deployments headed to the Phoenix area next. Microsoft invited developers on Monday to start using Maia’s control software, but it’s not clear when users of the company’s Azure cloud service will be able to utilize servers running on the chip.
Some of the first units will go to Microsoft’s superintelligence team, generating data to improve the next generation of AI models, cloud and AI chief Scott Guthrie said in a blog post. The chips will also be used to power the Copilot assistant for businesses and AI models, including OpenAI’s latest, that Microsoft rents to cloud customers.
Microsoft’s chip push started years after Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google began designing their own chips. All three have a similar aim: cost-effective machines that can be seamlessly plugged into data centers and offer savings and other efficiencies to cloud customers. The high costs and short supply of the latest industry-leading chips from Nvidia has fueled a scramble to find alternative sources of computing power.
Microsoft says its chip delivers better performance on some AI tasks than…