SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft on Wednesday announced that DeepSeek's reasoning model R1 is available on Azure AI Foundry service, Microsoft's platform that brings together a number of artificial intelligence services for enterprises under a single banner.

In a blog post, Microsoft said that the version of R1 on Azure AI Foundry has "undergone rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations", including "automated assessments of model behavior and extensive security reviews to mitigate potential risks".

In the near future, customers will be able to use "distilled" flavors of R1 to run locally on Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft said.

"As we continue expanding the model catalog in Azure AI Foundry, we're excited to see how developers and enterprises leverage... R1 to tackle real-world challenges and deliver transformative experiences," Microsoft noted in the post.

The AI model will be available in the model catalog on the platforms and will join more than 1,800 models that Microsoft is offering.

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DeepSeek last week launched a free AI assistant that it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent services. By Monday, the assistant had overtaken US rival ChatGPT in downloads from Apple's App Store.

The move comes as Microsoft has been looking to reduce its dependence on ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has been working to add internal and third-party AI models to power its flagship AI product Microsoft 365 Copilot, Reuters reported last month.

Net income increases

Also on Wednesday, Microsoft announced its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, posting revenues of $69.6 billion, a 12-percent increase year-on-year.

Ending Dec 31, 2024, the company's quarterly net income was $24.1 billion, up by 10 percent year-on-year.

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Its operating income was up 17 percent to $31.7 billion. Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $29.4 billion and increased 14 percent. Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $25.5 billion, up by 19 percent. Revenue in More Personal Computing was $14.7 billion and relatively unchanged, the company said.

With Reuters inputs