Microsoft to announce MAI-Thinking-1 reasoning model and Windows 11 developer mode at Build
Microsoft will announce MAI-Thinking-1 at its Build conference on June 2, 2026, according to sources cited by The Verge. The model is Microsoft's first reasoning model and was not trained using distillation from other AI models. The company will also reveal MAI-Image-2.5 and MAI-Image-2.5-Flash image models, along with a new developer-optimized Windows 11 experience.
Microsoft to announce MAI-Thinking-1 reasoning model and Windows 11 developer mode at Build
Microsoft will unveil MAI-Thinking-1, its first reasoning model, at the Build conference on June 2, 2026, according to sources cited by The Verge's Tom Warren. The model was not trained using distillation — meaning it wasn't trained by learning from another AI model's outputs — and will target enterprise use cases.
Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman will present the model alongside announcements of MAI-Image-2.5 and MAI-Image-2.5-Flash, which Suleyman teased last week. Pricing, context windows, and benchmark scores have not been disclosed.
Windows 11 developer experience
Microsoft plans to announce a new Windows 11 developer-optimized experience featuring a distraction-free environment with pre-installed development tools, apps, and scripts. The company will also detail efforts to rewrite parts of Windows 11 for improved performance, building on improvements already rolling out to Windows Insiders.
The conference will emphasize local model execution on Windows, allowing developers to run AI models on-device rather than relying on cloud services. This includes support for Nvidia's RTX Spark silicon, which Nvidia announced as "the most efficient PC chip ever built" at Computex.
Copilot super app in development
Microsoft is building a Copilot "super app" that combines its various Copilot AI assistants into a single interface, according to sources. The app will include Microsoft Scout, an AI agent reportedly based on Microsoft's OpenClaw work. A leaked screenshot circulating on Friday was a mockup prepared for Build demonstrations. The app won't be available at Build, with a late summer preview expected.
Conference context
Build 2026 is taking place in a smaller, more intimate San Francisco venue as Microsoft attempts to rebuild developer trust following GitHub departures, outages, and security incidents. Satya Nadella will discuss the RTX Spark announcement with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during his keynote, with Qualcomm also expected to present on Windows on Arm improvements.
The keynote begins at 9:30 AM PT on June 2.
What this means
Microsoft's non-distilled reasoning model represents a different training approach from competitors like OpenAI's o1 series and DeepSeek-R1. Enterprise targeting suggests Microsoft sees reasoning models as differentiated enough to warrant dedicated business use cases rather than general consumer deployment. The emphasis on local Windows execution aligns with broader industry movement toward on-device AI, though actual performance and cost comparisons against cloud alternatives remain to be demonstrated.
Related Articles
Microsoft strips color from Copilot interface in pursuit of 'intelligence that feels present but not imposing'
Microsoft has rolled out a visual overhaul for Copilot in Microsoft 365, replacing the colorful interface with a predominantly black-and-white, text-forward design. The redesign, aimed at making the AI assistant feel "present but not imposing," includes a new adaptive prompt surface and consistent side panel placement across Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Microsoft 365 Copilot gains 2x faster load times and progressive disclosure interface
Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot that loads twice as fast, according to the company. The update introduces "progressive disclosure" — showing tools and controls contextually based on prompts rather than displaying all options at once.
GitHub Copilot switches to token-based billing June 1, some users report costs jumping from $50 to $3,000
Microsoft is ending GitHub Copilot's flat-rate subscription model in favor of token-based billing starting June 1. Some developers report monthly costs rising from approximately $29-50 to $750-3,000, while others claim the increases only affect inefficient "vibe-coders" who iterate excessively without clear direction.
JetBrains Releases Mellum2: 12B MoE Model With 2.5B Active Parameters for Code and Text
JetBrains has released Mellum2, a 12-billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model that activates only 2.5 billion parameters per token. The open-source model is designed for code generation, RAG pipelines, and agent workflows with 2x faster inference than similar-sized models.
Comments
Loading...