Microsoft built a hardware platform for real-time AI

It can handle Microsoft's own AI framework (Cognitive Toolkit), but it can also work with Google's TensorFlow and other systems. To no one's surprise, Microsoft plans to make Project Brainwave available through its own Azure cloud services (it's been big on advanced tech in Azure as of late) so that companies can make use of live AI. There's no guarantee it will receive wide adoption, but it's evident that Microsoft doesn't want to cede any ground to Google, Facebook and others that are making a big deal of internet-delivered AI. It's betting that companies will gladly flock to Azure if they know they have more control over how their AI runs.