You’re correct that with the GA release today, High Volume Email (HVE) supports delivery to internal recipients within the tenant only, and external email delivery is not currently supported yet.
With the currently GA’d product, HVE was introduced to address high‑scale, automated application‑generated messaging (such as monitoring alerts, HR notifications, or line‑of‑business application messages) in a way that helps keep this traffic isolated from user mailboxes and protect overall tenant mail flow health.
We recognize that many customers are evaluating whether HVE could support broader outbound bulk email scenarios. Support for additional delivery scenarios is part of how we’re thinking about the continued evolution of HVE.
In the meantime, scenarios that require sending to external recipients should continue to use SMTP relay, SMTP client submission, or purpose‑built email delivery solutions depending on volume and architecture needs.