Independence day
According to Microsoft, MAI-1-preview uses an in-house mixture-of-experts model that was pre-trained and post-trained on 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, a more modest infrastructure than the 100,000 H100 cluster sizes reportedly used for model development by some rivals. However, with an eye to ramping up performance, Microsoft AI is now running MAI-1-preview on Nvidia’s more powerful GB200 cluster, the company said.
For Microsoft, and perhaps the entire AI sector, the models’ appearance marks an important moment. Hitherto, the company has relied on models from OpenAI, a company it has invested a reported $13 billion in since 2019 and which uses the Azure cloud platform to host its models and services.
However, in 2024 Microsoft surprised the industry by hiring former DeepMind founder Mustafa Suleyman and his Inflection AI startup team to develop AI models for Microsoft AI, independent of OpenAI. Inflection AI continues to develop its own enterprise AI with a new CEO, while the former founders and core team work on Microsoft’s Copilot products.
