Microsoft’s In-House AI Ambitions Face Hurdles, But Momentum May Be Building
Despite its deep investment and vocal commitment to artificial intelligence, Microsoft has struggled to match the pace of its key partner OpenAI when it comes to developing proprietary AI systems. While Microsoft remains reliant on OpenAI for the core models powering many of its AI products, including its Copilot tools, the company has been quietly working on its own alternatives. Until recently, these efforts were characterized by delays and internal friction.
That may be beginning to change. According to a report from The Information, Microsoft has completed training a new family of generative AI models, dubbed MAI, which reportedly perform almost as well as models from OpenAI and Anthropic on industry-standard benchmarks. The company is also developing reasoning models intended to compete with offerings from OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Alibaba. These models aim to replicate human-style cognitive functions like logical reasoning and step-by-step problem solving—areas where chain-of-thought processes are critical. However, Microsoft’s access to OpenAI’s own reasoning techniques has reportedly been limited, with the report noting that OpenAI failed to fully share technical details as previously agreed.
The push to go independent hasn’t been smooth. When the existence of the MAI project became public last year, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott tried to downplay speculation, emphasizing the longstanding partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft’s parallel research efforts. Many expected a major reveal at the 2024 Microsoft Build conference, but that moment never came. Behind the scenes, the MAI rollout reportedly suffered from a mix of technical challenges, shifting strategies, and internal disagreements that led to the departure of key personnel.
Now, Microsoft may be preparing to finally bring MAI to market. The report claims the company is considering releasing the models as APIs later this year, positioning them as direct competition to those from OpenAI—and possibly even replacing OpenAI’s models in some Copilot implementations. If true, this would mark a significant shift in Microsoft’s AI strategy: from relying heavily on a partner to potentially standing alongside—or in competition with—it in the race to define the next generation of AI tools.