Microsoft Makes DeepSeek’s R1 Available Via Azure AI Foundry and GitHub

Microsoft isn’t wasting any time to capitalize on the sudden interest in DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that released efficient and more cost-effective AI models than its US-based competitors. Yesterday, the Redmond giant announced that it was making DeepSeek R1 available for developers via Azure AI Foundry and GitHub.

Despite Microsoft’s close partnership with OpenAI, the company is currently offering access to over 1,800 models to its customers. Asha Sharma, Corporate Vice President, AI Platform, also explained yesterday that DeepSeek R1 has “undergone rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations, including automated assessments of model behavior and extensive security reviews to mitigate potential risks.”

Earlier this week, Bloomberg and the Financial Times both reported that OpenAI and Microsoft were suspecting DeepSeek to have trained its models using OpenAI data obtained in an unauthorized manner. This makes Microsoft’s DeepSeek announcement even more surprising, but again, it may be in the company’s best interest to offer its customers access to this new model with the promise of the highest level of safety and security.

“One of the key advantages of using DeepSeek R1 or any other model on Azure AI Foundry is the speed at which developers can experiment, iterate, and integrate AI into their workflows,” Sharma explained. “With built-in model evaluation tools, they can quickly compare outputs, benchmark performance, and scale AI-powered applications.”

On GitHub, DeepSeek-R1 is now available in public preview in GitHub Models, which lets developers experiment with AI models for free. On its Windows Developer blog, Microsoft also announced yesterday that developers will also be able to use distilled flavors of the DeepSeek R1 model to run locally on Copilot+ PCs.