Microsoft Brings GPT-6 Astra to Foundry With Enterprise Controls for Agentic AI

Dewain Robinson (0:00)

Hello, welcome to the Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Minute, where we explore the opportunities, impacts, and outcomes made possible by AI. So a quick recap before I get into this story. At the start of September, OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, which it described as the world's most intelligent and aligned model. I'd urge you to check out that promotional video that accompanied that launch, because it's pretty mind-blowing in terms of what this model can do.

Ultimately, it's been a shift away from Q&A or chat and into actions. So we're talking computer use, software engineering, browsing, and so on. The reason we're talking about this today is that shortly after launch, Microsoft announced that it had made this frontier model generally available for all customers in Microsoft Foundry.

Now in practice, this means that customers can use this model to complete multi-step, agentic work with open-ended goals. Now Microsoft is really pushing the idea of computer use and how transformative this can be for its enterprise clients. And the model is pricey with the standard global tier starting at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. Short context, wrong context is $20 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens. However, when Microsoft is positioning, its use is quite significant and it explains this high price point. Positioning Astra and Foundry is a tool for software engineering, business intelligence, professional work, and of course workflows. Now, of course Astra is available directly through OpenAI, but the merits of getting it through Foundry are really being lauded as those enterprise controls for agentic work. Another important thing here, OpenAI says Astra is its first model to reach the critical level of cybersecurity capability under its preparedness framework. So in testing, OpenAI found that Astra could discover and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities including two zero-day vulnerabilities. As a result, OpenAI has introduced extra safeguards and monitoring around Astra, including stronger protections against any cyber misuse. Foundry complements OpenAI's safety alignment and other factors with security, safety and compliance capabilities including Microsoft Entra identity and access management, encryption in transit and at rest, private networking options, role-based access controls, content filtering, safety evaluations, monitoring, and of course, governance tools. And that is what I think will draw people to Microsoft in this case. Thank you for watching.