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Microsoft launches hill-climbing MAI models for Copilot and Excel - RuntimeWire

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Why it matters

The rollout shows Microsoft leveraging its own product stack to create cheaper, specialized AI models, a move that could reshape enterprise AI economics and challenge the dominance of external foundation‑model providers.

On July 23rd, 2026 Microsoft AI published a blog post announcing the rollout of two new MAI (Microsoft AI) models built with the company’s "hill‑climbing" training pipeline. The models are integrated into GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Excel , the first product‑specific deployments of the approach first unveiled at the Build conference in June.

From a lightweight code model to a spreadsheet assistant

Sources

Hill-Climbing MAI models for GitHub Copilot and Excel | Microsoft AI microsoft.ai

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