Microsoft’s first advanced reasoning AI is here

Microsoft announced MAI-Thinking-1, its first advanced reasoning AI model, at Build 2026 as part of a suite of seven new in-house models. The medium-sized model matches leading competitors on key software engineering benchmarks and was trained from scratch on clean data without third-party distillation. The release marks Microsoft's deepening shift into independent AI development following its renegotiated partnership with OpenAI.

Microsoft announced a bunch of new in-house AI models at Build 2026, including a new “flagship” model: MAI-Thinking-1. It’s an ambitious step into model development for Microsoft, which introduced its initial in-house models last year /news/767809/microsoft-in-house-ai-models-launch-openai — before then, it had relied on OpenAI’s models. The two companies recently renegotiated their deal /tech/921210/microsoft-openai-partnership-divorce-notepad to loosen ties. Microsoft’s first advanced reasoning AI is here MAI-Thinking-1 is one of seven new models announced at Build 2026. MAI-Thinking-1 is one of seven new models announced at Build 2026. According to Microsoft https://microsoft.ai/news/building-a-hillclimbing-machine-launching-seven-new-mai-models/ , MAI-Thinking-1 is a “medium-sized model” that “matches leading models” on “key” software engineering benchmarks. Microsoft says the company “trained it from the ground up on clean data, without distillation from third-party models.” As for other models announced today, they’re focused on image generation, transcription, voice, and coding. MAI-Image 2.5 and the flash version can do text-to-image and image editing. MAI-Transcribe-1.5 is “five times faster than competing models.” MAI-Voice-2 and the flash version of that model which Microsoft says is “coming soon” add 15 new languages and new options for voices. The new coding model, MAI-Code-1-Flash, is “inference-efficient” and is integrated into GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code. Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Most Popular - Gemini Spark is the most impressive and terrifying AI experience I’ve had yet - Gemini’s new AI agent is about as good as Google’s demo - These are the first Nvidia RTX Spark laptops - This could be Windows’ M1 moment — but expect it to cost a ton - This is the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra with Nvidia RTX Spark