Microsoft AI announced three new foundation models on April 2, 2026, developed by its MAI Superintelligence team formed in November 2025 under CEO Mustafa Suleyman. MAI-Transcribe-1 offers speech-to-text transcription in 25 languages at 2.5 times the speed of Azure Fast for $0.36 per hour, MAI-Voice-1 generates 60 seconds of audio per second starting at $22 per million characters, and MAI-Image-2 costs $5-$33 per million tokens. Microsoft positions these models as cheaper than Google and OpenAI alternatives, despite having invested over $13 billion in OpenAI and hosting OpenAI models through a multi-year partnership recently renegotiated to allow Microsoft's independent superintelligence research.
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