[AINews] Microsoft Build: MAI-Thinking-1 and MAI Family models
Microsoft at Build 2026 announced seven new MAI models, including the flagship MAI-Thinking-1 reasoning model with 35B active parameters, 256K context, and strong benchmark scores like 97% on AIME 2025. The company released a highly transparent 109-page technical report that impressed researchers, emphasizing clean data lineage and no use of synthetic data or distillation. Build also focused on local AI with Windows as an agent runtime, the RTX Spark Dev Box, and Project Solara/Scout agent hardware. The GitHub Copilot app was unveiled as a desktop home for agent-native development, and Web IQ was introduced as a new grounding API for agents. Overall, the event positioned Microsoft as both a first-party frontier model developer and a multi-tier AI platform company.