Microsoft announced MAI-Thinking-1, a flagship reasoning AI model, alongside six other new models at Build 2026, marking a major step in in-house model development.
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<p class="has-text-align-none">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 <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/767809/microsoft-in-house-ai-models-launch-openai">last year</a> - before then, it had relied on OpenAI's models. The two companies recently <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/921210/microsoft-openai-partnership-divorce-notepad">renegotiated their deal</a> to loosen ties.</p>
<p class="has-text-align-none">According <a href="https://microsoft.ai/news/building-a-hillclimbing-machine-launching-seven-new-mai-models/">to Microsoft</a>, 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." </p>
<p class="has-text-align-none">As for other models announced today, t …</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/941664/microsoft-ai-model-reasoning-mai-thinking-1-build-2026">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>
# Microsoft’s first advanced reasoning AI is here
Source: [https://www.theverge.com/tech/941664/microsoft-ai-model-reasoning-mai-thinking-1-build-2026](https://www.theverge.com/tech/941664/microsoft-ai-model-reasoning-mai-thinking-1-build-2026)
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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\.
by
Jun 2, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
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Jay Peters
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more\. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme\.
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](https://www.theverge.com/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](https://www.theverge.com/tech/921210/microsoft-openai-partnership-divorce-notepad)to loosen ties\.
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\.
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- Jay Peters
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Microsoft is set to announce new AI models including its first reasoning model, MAI-Thinking-1, along with Windows 11 developer experience improvements and Copilot updates at its Build conference.
Microsoft AI introduces MAI-Thinking-1, a 35B-active parameter reasoning model trained from scratch without distillation, achieving strong performance on software engineering and math benchmarks while emphasizing clean data and self-sufficiency.
Microsoft announces seven new MAI models, including a strong reasoning model (MAI-Thinking-1) and coding model (MAI-Code-1-Flash), along with Frontier Tuning for enterprise customization.
Microsoft announced two new LLMs: MAI-Thinking-1 (35B reasoning model) and MAI-Code-1-Flash (5B code model), both trained on enterprise-grade, clean data without third-party distillation, with MAI-Thinking-1 claimed to be preferred over Sonnet 4.6 in blind evaluations.
Microsoft AI announces MAI-Thinking-1, a 35B active/1T total MoE reasoning model competitive on STEM and coding tasks, developed using Ray for distributed training and orchestration.