Microsoft Builds Its Own Models as OpenAI Ties Fray

Microsoft just released two new models: MAI-1-preview, a large language model, and MAI-Voice-1, a speech model. The company described MAI-Voice-1 as efficient enough to generate a minute of audio in under a second on a single GPU, while MAI-1-preview was trained on 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs and is already being tested for Copilot features. The launch came just weeks after Microsoft announced it was incorporating OpenAI’s GPT-5 into its consumer, developer, and enterprise products. On paper, Microsoft is both doubling down on OpenAI and setting up its own alternatives. The moves are not contradictory. They are a correction of risk that the company built into its strategy. For years, Microsoft has leaned almost entirely on OpenAI to supply the foundation models running its Copilot assi