Microsoft Build: Seven in-house AI models, GitHub Copilot desktop agent manager, and Web IQ search API for agents
Microsoft announced seven new AI models trained from scratch (not distilled from OpenAI), including the flagship MAI-Thinking-1 reasoning model and MAI-Transcribe-1.5, plus a 'Frontier Tuning' reinforcement learning approach for enterprise workflow training. GitHub released a desktop Copilot app designed to manage multiple parallel AI agents with isolated git worktrees and bidirectional canvases. Microsoft also launched Web IQ, an agent-native Bing-powered grounding API already powering search in Copilot and ChatGPT, running 2.5x faster than alternatives with lower token costs. The roundup also covers Nous Research's Hermes Desktop cross-platform agent app, Alibaba's Qwen3.7-Plus multimodal model, and OpenAI's role-specific Codex plugins.
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Microsoft Build recap: MAI-Thinking-1 and MAI Family models announced
Microsoft unveiled MAI-Thinking-1 and the broader MAI family of models at Microsoft Build 2026, as covered in the Latent Space AINews recap. The announcement represents Microsoft's push into frontier reasoning models under its own brand, distinct from its OpenAI partnership. Technical details of the MAI model family are discussed, signaling a significant strategic move toward Microsoft-native AI model development.
Data Points: China Blocks Meta-Manus Deal; Microsoft-OpenAI Restructure; Nvidia Nemotron Omni; Grok 4.3; OpenAI AGI Principles; IBM Granite 4.1
A roundup of major AI developments: Chinese regulators blocked Meta's acquisition of Singapore-based agent startup Manus on security grounds; Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership, with OpenAI gaining freedom to sell on rival clouds while Microsoft loses its AGI-access clause; Nvidia released Nemotron 3 Nano Omni, a 30B MoE omnimodal open-weights model for local agent deployment; xAI shipped Grok 4.3 with a 1M-token context window at reduced pricing; OpenAI published AGI operating principles; and IBM released Granite 4.1 across language, vision, speech, embedding, and safety modalities.
Simon Willison on Microsoft's new MAI models
Simon Willison covers Microsoft's release of new MAI (Microsoft AI) models. The post is commentary from a tier-2 source on a Microsoft model announcement, likely summarizing capabilities and context. Microsoft's MAI model line represents the company's continued push to develop proprietary frontier models alongside its OpenAI partnership.
Data Points: Qwen3.7-Max, OpenAI Math Proof, Gated DeltaNet-2, Trump AI Order, Microsoft Fara1.5
This edition of The Batch covers five significant AI developments: Alibaba's Qwen3.7-Max reasoning model with 1M token context and agentic capabilities ranking fifth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index; an OpenAI reasoning model resolving the 80-year-old Erdős planar unit distance problem; Nvidia's Gated DeltaNet-2 outperforming Mamba-3 and other linear attention architectures; Trump pulling back a proposed AI regulation executive order; and Microsoft Research's Fara1.5 computer-use agent family beating OpenAI Operator and Google Gemini on the Online-Mind2Web benchmark.
Data Points: Thinking Machines Interaction Model, ERNIE 5.1, Co-Mathematician, RL Conductor, and More
This edition of The Batch covers five notable AI developments: Thinking Machines' research preview of an 'interaction model' with a 200ms micro-turn multimodal architecture; Baidu's ERNIE 5.1, a compressed derivative of ERNIE 5.0 using only 6% of typical pre-training compute; Google DeepMind's Co-Mathematician collaborative workbench reaching 48% on FrontierMath Tier 4; a 7B RL Conductor model that orchestrates multi-agent workflows via reinforcement learning; and Google's Magic Pointer cursor system powered by Gemini. Secondary items include GitHub Copilot pricing restructuring ahead of usage-based billing.
Data Points: OpenAI and Microsoft sever their exclusive relationship
This edition of The Batch covers several major AI industry developments: OpenAI has revised its partnership with Microsoft, ending exclusivity while retaining Microsoft as primary cloud partner through 2032 and gaining freedom to deploy on AWS and Google Cloud. DeepSeek released V4 model weights featuring 1M-token context and Huawei Ascend chip optimization, though it trails leading open and closed models on aggregate benchmarks. Google and Amazon are deepening investments in Anthropic with up to $40B and $25B respectively in funding-for-compute deals, and an agentic AI system autonomously designed a functional RISC-V CPU from a 219-word spec in 12 hours.
Data Points: Apple/Google Siri overhaul, Gemma 4 12B, Kimi Code CLI, OpenJarvis, and U.S. OpenAI stake talks
A multi-item digest covers several significant AI developments: Apple is expected to announce a revamped Siri at WWDC that uses Google Gemini models distilled for on-device use alongside cloud routing, marking a notable Apple-Google AI partnership. Google released Gemma 4 12B, an encoder-free multimodal open-weights model designed for consumer laptops under Apache 2.0. Moonshot AI released Kimi Code CLI, an open-source terminal coding agent with native subagent orchestration and conversational MCP configuration. Stanford and Lambda Labs released OpenJarvis, an on-device agent framework claiming near-cloud accuracy at 800× lower API cost. The White House and OpenAI are reportedly negotiating a government equity stake in OpenAI as part of a proposed Public Wealth Fund.
Microsoft agent-framework: open-source library for building and orchestrating AI agents
Microsoft has published an open-source framework on GitHub for building, orchestrating, and deploying AI agents and multi-agent workflows, with support for both Python and .NET. The repository has accumulated 11,061 stars. It represents Microsoft's entry into the agent harness tooling space alongside existing frameworks like LangChain and AutoGen.