By Daniel Howley
Publication Date: 2026-06-04 18:33:00
Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) were once close pals. But after years of tension between the two, they’re now best described as frienemies.
On Tuesday, Microsoft drilled another hole in the duo’s sinking relationship with the debut of its MAI-Thinking-1 AI model, a midsize model that the company said is intended for high-efficiency, low-token-cost situations.
In terms of capabilities, Microsoft claimed that MAI-Thinking-1 matches Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on the SWE-Bench Pro coding benchmark. Independent testers, Microsoft said, also preferred its model to Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.6. Anthropic debuted its latest flagship model, Opus 4.8, last week.
Microsoft’s effort is part of its push to decrease its reliance on OpenAI’s technology to power its…
