According to foreign media reports, insiders have revealed that Microsoft's engineering team is accelerating the deployment of server resources to prepare for the upcoming GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models from OpenAI. Although OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently confirmed that GPT-4.5 will be unveiled in a few weeks, Microsoft internally expects to complete the hosting deployment of the new model as early as next week. This move suggests that the technological race in the field of generative AI has entered a sprint phase.
Codename Orion, GPT-4.5 is seen as the "final piece" of the current technology roadmap. While OpenAI has not disclosed its specific performance parameters, internal testing has shown that this model has significant improvements in multimodal task handling and contextual coherence compared to previous generations.
It is noteworthy that GPT-4.5 is still based on the traditional "chain of thought" architecture, which means its logical reasoning capabilities have not achieved a fundamental breakthrough. However, the real focus is on GPT-5—this model, referred to by Altman as "integrating many of our core technologies," is expected to officially debut in late May. GPT-5 will be the first to feature the o3 reasoning model, a technology that stirred controversy last Christmas due to "AI self-improvement" experiments, which may bring a qualitative change in solving complex problems and long-term memory.
According to sources, the development cycle of GPT-5 has experienced delays compared to the original plan. Previously, OpenAI announced it would launch GPT-2024 (possibly the codename for GPT-5) by the end of 2024, but due to technical bottlenecks, it has been postponed to early 2025. Microsoft's early deployment of servers is not only to respond to the rapid launch of GPT-4.5 but also to secure a time window for the large-scale training and deployment of GPT-5. As OpenAI's main cloud service partner, Microsoft's Azure computing clusters provide foundational support for the GPT series and strengthen the strategic binding between the two companies through technological collaboration.
Industry analysts point out that if GPT-5 is launched as scheduled, its multimodal interaction capabilities and autonomous learning features could redefine the role boundaries of AI assistants. Moreover, Microsoft's early layout on the server side reflects the rapid growth trend in the demand for AI computing power among tech giants. As generative AI technology continues to break through, the arms race in computing power led by Microsoft and OpenAI is quietly reshaping the competitive landscape of the global AI industry.
