Microsoft launches hill-climbing MAI models for Copilot and Excel

Microsoft AI on July 23rd, 2026 announced the rollout of two new MAI models built with a hill-climbing training pipeline, integrated into GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Excel. The models claim to match GPT-5.6 in Excel and beat GPT-5.4 Mini in Copilot while using fewer tokens, marking the first product-specific deployments of the approach unveiled at Build in June.

Microsoft launches hill-climbing MAI models for Copilot and Excel Microsoft's Superintelligence team released specialized MAI models that claim to match GPT‑5.6 in Excel and beat GPT‑5.4 Mini in Copilot while using fewer tokens. By Ryan Merket /author/ryan-merket · Published Why it matters The rollout shows Microsoft leveraging its own product stack to create cheaper, specialized AI models, a move that could reshape enterprise AI economics and challenge the dominance of external foundation‑model providers. On July 23rd, 2026 Microsoft AI published a blog post announcing the rollout of two new MAI Microsoft AI models built with the company’s "hill‑climbing" training pipeline. The models are integrated into GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Excel , the first product‑specific deployments of the approach first unveiled at the Build conference in June. From a lightweight code model to a spreadsheet assistant Reader comments Conversation for this story loads after sign-in.