Microsoft is reportedly working on a new AI model known as MAI-1, which aims to compete with existing offerings from Google and Anthropic. The Information has confirmed this development, stating that MAI-1 may also challenge OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft has made a significant investment. However, Microsoft has declined to comment on these reports.
According to Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott, the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI is mutually beneficial and set to have a lasting impact. Scott revealed that OpenAI utilizes supercomputers developed by Microsoft to train cutting-edge models, which are then made available in products and services for wider use. The development of MAI-1 is entrusted to Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of Google DeepMind and former CEO of AI start-up Inflection, who joined Microsoft along with his team in March.
Sources close to the matter have stated that MAI-1 is different from the models previously released by Inflection, for which Microsoft acquired the intellectual property for $65 million. This new model is expected to be significantly larger than Microsoft’s previous open-source models, requiring more data and computing power and therefore will come at a higher cost. MAI-1 is estimated to have around 500 billion parameters, less than OpenAI’s GPT-4 which has over 1 trillion but larger than smaller models from other companies such as Apple or Amazon.