According to The Information, Microsoft is developing a new AI model, internally named MAI-1, designed to compete with the leading models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. This significant step forward in the tech giant's AI capabilities is boosted by Mustafa Suleyman, the former Google AI leader who previously served as CEO of Inflection AI before Microsoft acquired the majority of its staff and intellectual property for $650 million in March. MAI-1 is a custom Microsoft creation that utilizes training data and technology from Inflection but is not a transferred model. It is also distinct from Inflection's previously released Pi models, as confirmed by two Microsoft insiders familiar with the project. With approximately 500 billion parameters, MAI-1 will be significantly larger than its predecessors, surpassing the capabilities of Microsoft's smaller, open-source models.

For comparison, OpenAI's GPT-4 boasts 1.8 trillion parameters in a Mixture of Experts sparse design, while open-source models from Meta and Mistral feature 70 billion parameters dense. Microsoft's investment in MAI-1 highlights its commitment to staying competitive in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. The development of this large-scale model represents a significant step forward for the tech giant, as it seeks to challenge industry leaders in the field. The increased computing power, training data, and financial resources required for MAI-1 demonstrate Microsoft's dedication to pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities and intention to compete on its own. With the involvement of Mustafa Suleyman, a renowned expert in AI, the company is well-positioned to make significant strides in this field.

IBM announced the availability of the popular open-source Mixtral-8x7B large language model (LLM), developed by Mistral AI, on its watsonx AI and data platform, as it continues to expand capabilities to help clients innovate with IBM's own foundation models and those from a range of open-source providers. IBM offers an optimized version of Mixtral-8x7B that, in internal testing, was able to increase throughput—or the amount of data that can be processed in a given time period—by 50 percent when compared to the regular model. This could potentially cut latency by 35-75 percent, depending on batch size—speeding time to insights. This is achieved through a process called quantization, which reduces model size and memory requirements for LLMs and, in turn, can speed up processing to help lower costs and energy consumption.

The addition of Mixtral-8x7B expands IBM's open, multi-model strategy to meet clients where they are and give them choice and flexibility to scale enterprise AI solutions across their businesses. Through decades-long AI research and development, open collaboration with Meta and Hugging Face, and partnerships with model leaders, IBM is expanding its watsonx.ai model catalog and bringing in new capabilities, languages, and modalities. IBM's enterprise-ready foundation model choices and its watsonx AI and data platform can empower clients to use generative AI to gain new insights and efficiencies, and create new business models based on principles of trust. IBM enables clients to select the right model for the right use cases and price-performance goals for targeted business domains like finance.

Tech giant Microsoft and Paris-based startup Mistral AI, an innovator in open-source AI model development, have announced a new multi-year partnership to accelerate AI innovation and expand access to Mistral's state-of-the-art models. The collaboration will leverage Azure's cutting-edge AI infrastructure to propel Mistral's research and bring its innovations to more customers globally. The partnership focuses on three core areas. First, Microsoft will provide Mistral with Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure to power advanced AI training and inference for Mistral's flagship models like Mistral-Large. Second, the companies will collaborate on AI research and development to push AI model's boundaries. And third, Azure's enterprise capabilities will give Mistral additional opportunities to promote, sell, and distribute their models to Microsoft customers worldwide.

However, an investment in a European startup can not go smoothly without the constant eyesight of the European Union authorities and regulators to oversee the deal. According to Bloomberg, an EU spokesperson on Tuesday claimed that the EU regulators will perform an analysis of Microsoft's investment into Mistral after receiving a copy of the agreement between the two parties. While there is no formal investigation yet, if EU regulators continue to probe Microsoft's deal and intentions, they could launch a complete formal investigation that could lead to the termination of Microsoft's plans. Of course, the formal investigation is still on hold, but investing in EU startups might become unfeasible for American tech giants if the EU regulators continue to push the scrutiny of every investment made in companies based on EU soil.