Azure's open-sourced tools appealed to the nonprofit, as well as its computation-boosting Batch and machine learning capabilities, Microsoft said in a blog post. The partnership also nets OpenAI early use of the software giant's GPU-based Azure N-series virtual machines, which will be opened for general use next month.

It's not the first AI partnership, nor the only one to rely on cloud-based systems to run computations, but Microsoft is devoting plenty of development to boost Azure's appeal. While their current N-series virtual machines run on Nvidia Tesla GPUs, those will be replaced by next-generation Pascal-based GPUs in the near future.

Microsoft is also announcing its new Azure Bot Service, which aims to let developers speed up development of bots within the software giant's Bot Framework and manage them in a serverless Azure environment, according to Microsoft.