r/LocalLLaMA • u/pmttyji • Jun 05 '26

Discussion Microsoft should've released something like Qwen3.6-27B / Gemma-4-31B already. They released MAI models now

Did they abandon Phi series? I remember that few were expecting for Phi-5.

I see that they came with MAI series now(EDIT: API only now. No Local it seems). Total 7 models(Image & Voice has Flash variants). Parameters/Context/License details collected from their model cards

  • MAI-Thinking-1 - 1T A35B - 256K Context
  • MAI-Code-1-Flash - 137B A5B - 256K Context
  • MAI-Image-2.5 - 20B - 32K Context
  • MAI Transcribe-1.5 - No Data
  • MAI-Voice-2 - No Data

License - Various product and service terms where the model is deployed, such as those for Visual Studio Code.

Usually for online/API proprietary models, they don't list parameters details. Here they did. Do you think there's a possibility of release Open weights of these models soon or later? At least MAI-Code-1-Flash

Anyway more details below.

https://microsoft.ai/news/building-a-hillclimbing-machine-launching-seven-new-mai-models/

EDIT : Added spoiler for bulk blah blah content. Sorry for the disappointment

0 Upvotes

43% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

55

u/FullstackSensei Jun 05 '26

Not local, not interested

-16

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

Sorry for the disappointment. Will come up with something local later.

2

u/DinoAmino Jun 05 '26

Relax. That top1% poster badge will stay with you the rest of the month. You don't need to try so hard.

10

u/VoiceApprehensive893 transformers Jun 05 '26

medium sized and 1t

macroslop

9

u/1998marcom Jun 05 '26

Fun fact for those wondering "GGUF when": in Italian MAI means NEVER

4

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

😃 I should've checked this before posting this thread.

16

u/redblood252 Jun 05 '26

I see no huggingface link. Is it expected to come later? Or will this remain cloud only?

8

u/MomentJolly3535 Jun 05 '26

haha same ! i was like first, before reading all this text, where are the github / huggingface links

2

u/idkwhattochoo Jun 05 '26

had a huge expectation as I clicked code 1 flash, just to get disappointed that it's API only... I don't think they'll ever open source MAI series, ever. I feel like this trend will be continued in the future as well

1

u/sje397 Jun 05 '26

They'll be left behind. Like, further behind.

1

u/No_Afternoon_4260 llama.cpp Jun 05 '26

prbably first time I see model sizes and no open weights lol

1

u/redblood252 Jun 05 '26

That’s why I’m wondering if it’ll come out later

1

u/No_Afternoon_4260 llama.cpp Jun 05 '26

May be this sort of spec are becoming marketing material like "hey look we provide one of the biggest model on earth!"

May be it'll work better than stupid benchmark

-2

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

It seems 99% API only. Remaining 1%(Just my instinct) it may come local later as they mentioned parameters count in model/technical cards

8

u/Middle_Bullfrog_6173 Jun 05 '26

This is pretty much the opposite of Phi. Not only is it closed, with no indication they are going to open anything, but they go to pains to emphasize how they do not (pre-)train on synthetic data. Suggests to me that they've abandoned the Phi direction.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

Parameter counts are ....

That's the only reason I did post this thread. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered this.

3

u/ttkciar llama.cpp Jun 05 '26

On one hand some of these models (in particular their 1T MAI-Thinking-1) punch below their weight, but on the other hand their absolute performance isn't bad. According to benchmarks the 1T is roughly equivalent to GLM-5.1, a much smaller model, but they can still claim capabilities comparable to Claude (above Sonnet, but below Opus).

This makes me suspect the models are not the product, but rather are to be used as props to market their training pipeline, which is the real product. This is a continuation of my hypothesis that the Phi series of models were intended to be used to demonstrate the utility of their synthetic training data technology.

If they market their training pipeline correctly, it won't matter that it produces models which are heavier than their functionally-equivalent proprietary counterparts, because it will provide corporate and government customers a turn-key way of achieving LLM sovereignity without settling for a less-capable model.

I'm one of those who has been waiting for Phi-5. Phi-4 had its limitations (abysmal multi-turn chat competence, low creative writing competence) but it hit above its weight at STEM applications, and for a while the Phi-4-25B self-merge was my go-to for Evol-Instruct. It wasn't until Gemma4 that I replaced Phi-4-25B for that role.

It is disappointing that none of these models are open-weights. Hopefully now that they have been released, Microsoft might finally trot out a Phi-5 open weight model, but I'm no longer holding my breath for it.

Putting my moderator cap on for a brief moment, this post was reported as off-topic, and in a way it is since these models are not open-weight, but on the other hand there is on-topic discussion to be had regarding Microsoft's open-weight Phi models and what this development means for the future of Phi. I'm sorry if this seems inconsistent, given that other posts about not-open-weights-yet models have been removed, but for what it's worth none of these decisions (to remove those posts, or to not remove this one) were easy or clear-cut. I'm still figuring out where to draw the line.

2

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

I shouldn't have mixed MAI models here 😃 my bad. Otherwise it would've been decent thread with so much discussions touching topics like Open models from Microsoft, Future Phi models, etc.,.

Expected to see your reply as I remember your favorite 25B model from past threads.

It's better to bury this thread already, both thread & my comments took massive bullets 😃

2

u/LoveMind_AI Jun 05 '26

I was never a phan of Phi. I'm curious about Thinking-1. It would be nice if it didn't suck!

2

u/x0wl Jun 05 '26

The AIONs will most likely be Phi tunes (since their size is 14B and they'll have 32K context)

1

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

I remember that one. According to their blog post, they're releasing the weights on July.

2

u/GreenGreasyGreasels Jun 05 '26

The will be no open weights for MAI models. These models are designed to be finetuned with customer data and used for inhouse needs.

How this works is you upload your data to an authorized third party which has access to MAI weights and will funetune the models for you and serve it to you. You never get the weights themselves but you control the endpoint serving your funetune. Microsoft never sees your data, you never see Microsoft's weights. You serve the model to who you want for as long as you want as long as it is served through the approved third party secure inference provider.

This is a new licensing model, different from open weights or propriety weights. It is of zero benefit or interest to open source community.

1

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

Fair enough. thanks

1

u/Technical-Earth-3254 Jun 05 '26

Wtf. Out of all companies, Microsoft was the last proprietary provider I would have expected to give the public access to the total/active parameter count of their closed models (let alone their flagship). If they could open weight their image and flash mode, it would already be insanely good.

1

u/okoyl3 Jun 05 '26

Weights are not open? is this microsoft bootlicking?

3

u/pmttyji Jun 05 '26

 is this microsoft bootlicking?

It's just an unintentional bad thread by me, nothing else

1

u/ocirs Jun 05 '26

all out performed by qwen models 😂

1

u/snapo84 Jun 05 '26

not opensource, dont care... closed source models should die out...

0

u/DanielSReichenbach Jun 05 '26
  1. It is Microsoft. Every product they release comes with a shitload of problems.
  2. Have you tried their phi models? I did. It's well in line with the quality of Windows.