Microsoft's artificial intelligence research division has announced its collaboration with Elon Musk's non-profit organization OpenAI. The Collaboration will let OpenAI access the latest virtual technologies developed by Microsoft while Microsoft will have its Azure cloud platform carrying out further research.

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The collaboration comes as a part of Microsoft's drive to boost its cloud platform Azure's reach. The company said that OpenAI is interested in various Azure features such as its open sourced tools, machine learning capabilities, and computational abilities.

OpenAI is an early adopter of Azure N--Series Virtual Machines service. The feature will be publicly available in December this year. In its blog, OpenAI said, "In the coming months we will use thousands to tens of thousands of these machines to increase both the number of experiments we run and the size of the models we train." 

Microsoft is increasingly focusing on its cloud business as the main growth driver. The company is looking to yield $20 billion in revenue from its cloud services by 2018. The new collaboration will help Microsoft in positioning itself in Artificial Intelligence segment against companies such as Google and Amazon.

OpenAI is likely to use Microsoft technologies for running its mass-scale AI training and simulation tests. The non-profit is expected to develop its open source software to aid researchers dealing with AI workloads. It will also provide data to Microsoft, which will help the company in updating its cloud services accordingly.

OpenAI was created in December last year by Tesla chief Elon Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman. The nonprofit aims to develop Artificial Intelligence solutions for positive impact on the society.