# Microsoft AI — Hill-climbing MAI models for GitHub Copilot and Excel | Microsoft AI

- Company: Microsoft AI (microsoft.ai)
- Announced: 2026-07-23
- Category: model-update
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: yes
- Group: models
- Source: https://microsoft.ai/news/hill-climbing-mai-models-for-github-copilot-and-excel/
- Record: https://forck.live/items/10758-hill-climbing-mai-models-for-github-copilot-and-excel-microsoft-ai
- Subject: MAI
- Models affected: MAI-Code-1-Flash, GPT-5.6, GPT 5.4 Mini, Claude Haiku 4.5

Microsoft shared early results for MAI models specialized for agentic workloads in GitHub Copilot and Excel. The MAI model deployed in Excel is on par with GPT-5.6 for the most common tasks while being more cost-efficient, and MAI-Code-1-Flash in GitHub Copilot outperforms similarly sized models with a roughly 10% higher code accept rate and 10% lower median token usage than GPT 5.4 Mini and Claude Haiku 4.5. Microsoft is extending this hill-climbing approach to train efficient models across Copilot Chat, Outlook, PowerPoint, and more.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://microsoft.ai/news/hill-climbing-mai-models-for-github-copilot-and-excel/:

> In our live product deployment, we see that our MAI model deployed in Excel is on par with GPT-5.6 for the most common tasks while being more cost-efficient.

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Record: https://forck.live/items/10758-hill-climbing-mai-models-for-github-copilot-and-excel-microsoft-ai
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