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Microsoft has launched its second-generation custom AI chip, Maia 200, asserting it offers superior performance compared to chips from Amazon and Google. The new chip is already powering OpenAI's GPT-5.2 models and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
AI 生成摘要
微軟發表了第二代自研AI晶片Maia 200，並宣稱其效能優於亞馬遜和Google的晶片。該新晶片已用於支援OpenAI的GPT-5.2模型及Microsoft 365 Copilot。
What happens here matters everywhere
by Todd Bishop on Jan 26, 2026 at 8:24 amJanuary 26, 2026 at 8:24 am
Microsoft on Monday announced Maia 200, the second generation of its custom AI chip, claiming it’s the most powerful first-party silicon from any major cloud provider.
The company says Maia 200 delivers three times the performance of Amazon’s latest Trainium chip on certain benchmarks, and exceeds Google’s most recent tensor processing unit (TPU) on others.
The chip is already running workloads at Microsoft’s data center near Des Moines, Iowa. Microsoft says Maia 200 is powering OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and internal projects from its Superintelligence team. A second deployment at a data center near Phoenix is planned next.
It’s part of the larger trend among cloud giants to build their own custom silicon for AI rather than rely solely on Nvidia. Google has been refining its TPUs for nearly a decade, and Amazon’s Trainium line is now in its third generation, with a fourth already announced.
Microsoft first revealed its custom chip ambitions in late 2023, when it unveiled Maia 100 at its Ignite conference. Despite entering the race late, Microsoft makes the case that its tight integration between chips, AI models, and applications like Copilot gives it an edge.
The company says Maia 200 offers 30% better performance-per-dollar than its current hardware. Maia 200 also builds on the first-generation chip with a more specific focus on inference, the process of running AI models after they’ve been trained.
The chip competition among the cloud giants has intensified as the cost of running AI models becomes a bigger concern. Training a model is a one-time expense, but serving it to millions of users is a big ongoing expense. All three companies are betting that custom chips tuned for their own workloads will be cheaper than buying solely from Nvidia.
Microsoft is also opening the door to outside developers. The company announced a software development kit that will let AI startups and researchers optimize their models for Maia 200. Developers and academics can sign up for an early preview starting today.
University of Washington scientists and students are using AI to create real medicines.
Better treatments for cancer, autoimmune diseases, viruses and more are now on the horizon thanks to groundbreaking work with artificial intelligence from a team of scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design. Led by Nobel Prize winner David Baker, this team of Huskies uses AI tools to create proteins — biology’s building blocks — that lay the foundation for new medicines. Together, this international group of students, faculty and researchers acts as a “communal brain,” with each Husky contributing ideas and expertise from their fields. The institute’s recent breakthroughs — including an antivenom for snakebites, and antibiotics that combat drug-resistant bacteria — show how this innovative science can save and change lives.
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