The AI race is booming all around. Major tech giants are pushing their limits to stay ahead of the competition. One such player, Microsoft, announced its first in-house developed AI models, MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1 Preview, a strategic step towards competing with a long-time partner, OpenAI. Alongside, Microsoft has been integrating OpenAI’s GPT model into Copilot and other services. Thus, it’s now clear that Microsoft aims to advance in the AI space.
MAI-Voice-1: Super-Fast Speech AI
MAI-Voice-1, Microsoft’s first AI model, is basically a natural speech generation model with capabilities to produce a full minute of audio in less than a second with one GPU. According to Microsoft, it’s one of the most efficient models in the industry. The model is already powering Copilot Labs, podcasts, and Copilot Daily, enabling conversational experiences and rapid voice-based summaries.
MAI-1 Preview: Microsoft’s First Foundation Model
Here is the second release, MAI-Preview, Microsoft’s first large-scale foundation model that’s trained entirely in-house. The model is built on 15,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs and outperforms other AI players, such as Grok, which utilizes more than 100,000 GPUs.
The new model is currently available on LMArena for public testing and ranks 13th in global benchmarks when tested against GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, DeepSeek R-1, and Grok-3.
Microsoft’s View Regarding the New Models
On the newly launched model, Microsoft’s AI Chief, Mustafa Suleyman, commented,”
“It’s not just about size; it’s about the quality of the data that truly makes a model useful.” Alongside this, he stated that Microsoft is working on developing next-generation models using NVIDIA's GB200 chips across its data centers.
Regarding the strategy, Suleyman explained, “We don’t see AI as a single model game. Different models will serve different needs, from reasoning to creativity to voice.” This indicates a clear move toward a multi-model ecosystem.
Microsoft Competing with OpenAI
Although Microsoft has already invested $13 billion in the $500 billion startup, Azure powers its models, and the company remains closely associated with OpenAI. Meanwhile, Microsoft is incorporating OpenAI tech into Windows, Bing, and other products.
As the two start to compete, Microsoft now names OpenAI as a competitor. At the same time, OpenAI diversifies its partnerships with CoreWeave, Google, and Oracle to meet the increasing demand from ChatGPT's 700 million weekly users.
The company has also stated in its blog that it does not plan to rely on a single general-purpose model. Instead, it sees potential in offering different models that cater to various types of requests. Lastly, with the AI models MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-Preview, Microsoft is making a strategic move towards AI independence, going above and beyond the other players in the fast-paced AI world.
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