Microsoft Debuts MAI-Thinking-1 Reasoning Model
According to The Verge, Microsoft announced seven new in-house AI models at Build 2026, led by a new flagship reasoning model called MAI-Thinking-1. The Verge reports Microsoft describes MAI-Thinking-1 as a "medium-sized model" that "matches leading models" on "key" software engineering benchmarks and that it was "trained ... from the ground up on clean data, without distillation from third-party models." The Verge also lists other models unveiled at Build: MAI-Image-2.5 (text-to-image and image editing), MAI-Transcribe-1.5 (which Microsoft says is "five times faster than competing models"), MAI-Voice-2, and MAI-Code-1 (integrated into GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code). Tom Warren at The Verge previewed Build coverage noting a Copilot "super app" and new Windows developer features were expected.
