Thought Leadership
Microsoft is apparently working on in-house AI reasoning models that will compete directly with OpenAI products. As the US tech portal “The Information” reports, citing a person familiar with the initiative, the company is considering offering these models to developers in the future.
The technology giant is considered the most important investor behind OpenAI . However, according to the report, Microsoft is already testing models from xAI, Meta and DeepSeek as potential alternatives for its AI assistant Copilot. These measures point to a strategic realignment with which Microsoft wants to reduce its dependence on the ChatGPT developer.
This development seems remarkable, as Microsoft had previously played a pioneering role among the tech giants in the lucrative AI race thanks to its early partnership with OpenAI.
MAI project almost on a par with OpenAI
According to “The Information”, Microsoft’s AI department headed by Mustafa Suleyman has completed the development of a family of models with the internal code name “MAI”. MAI presumably stands for Microsoft Artificial Intelligence. In standard benchmark tests, these models are expected to achieve almost the same performance as the leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
It should be emphasized that Microsoft’s development team is working on advanced reasoning models. These use chain-of-thought methods, in which the AI solves complex problems through comprehensible intermediate steps. This methodical approach enables the systems to draw logical conclusions and present solutions transparently. With this technology, Microsoft could compete directly with the leading offerings from OpenAI.
First tests in Copilot
According to the report, Suleyman’s team is already experimenting with using the much more comprehensive MAI models instead of the OpenAI models in Copilot. According to the report, Microsoft is considering releasing the MAI models as an Application Programming Interface (API) later this year. This would enable external developers to integrate these models into their own applications.
