Frontier Tuning

Microsoft MAI Models in 2026: What You Can Actually Use, and What It Costs

At Build 2026 on June 2, Microsoft unveiled seven in-house models under the MAI (Microsoft AI) brand, covering reasoning, code, images, voice and transcription. A company that spent years as OpenAI’s biggest backer called it a move toward “long-term self-sufficiency.”

For a manager, two things in this announcement matter. The first is price: an hour of recorded meeting gets transcribed for $0.10, and you don’t need an Azure contract to do it. The second is Frontier Tuning – training a model on your own workflows inside your own compliance boundary. It’s the strongest idea Microsoft has shipped all year, and it comes only with the full Microsoft enterprise stack.

So let’s start with who can buy what, then get to the models and the numbers.