Microsoft’s first advanced reasoning AI is here

MAI-Thinking-1 is one of seven new models announced at Build 2026.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

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 — before then, it had relied on OpenAI’s models. The two companies recently renegotiated their deal to loosen ties.

According to Microsoft, 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.