TL;DRMicrosoft has begun swapping OpenAI and Anthropic models out for its own in-house MAI models in some app features where cost or data residency favours them, per Bloomberg. The shift is incremental, OpenAI and Anthropic still handle most Copilot traffic, but it marks Microsoft steadily reducing a dependence it spent years and billions building, enabled by the 2025 renegotiation that freed it to build competing models.
Microsoft has begun replacing OpenAI and Anthropic models with its own AI in some product features, Bloomberg reports. The shift routes selected tasks to Microsoft’s in-house MAI models where cost or data residency favours them.
The change is incremental rather than a clean break. OpenAI and Anthropic still handle most production traffic inside Copilot, with MAI slotting in where its economics stack up.
Microsoft unveiled seven MAI models at its Build conference, including its first reasoning model and image, voice, and transcription systems. It has been testing MAI-Transcribe-1 across Teams and Copilot, and rolling MAI-Image-2 into Bing and PowerPoint.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!The pitch is efficiency, as Microsoft can run these models on its own Azure infrastructure and skip paying third parties. It says one MAI model, tuned for consulting firm McKinsey, beat OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 on cost efficiency by a factor of ten.
