Tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) launched three new in-house AI models that compete directly with offerings from Google (GOOGL), OpenAI, and other AI startups. The new models, called MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2, are designed to handle speech, voice generation, and image creation. According to CEO Satya Nadella, these tools are being made available to developers through Microsoft Foundry and will make it easier to build AI-powered applications. Importantly, the models are priced competitively.
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MAI-Transcribe-1 starts at $0.36 per hour, MAI-Voice-1 at $22 per million characters, and MAI-Image-2 at $5 per million text tokens and $33 per million image tokens. In comparison, Google’s image models are significantly more expensive, with Gemini 3 Pro costing $120 per million tokens and Gemini 3.1 Flash priced at $60 per million tokens. As a result, Microsoft is looking to attract developers by offering similar capabilities but at a lower cost.
Microsoft also claims that its transcription model is the most accurate available. It reported a word error rate of 3.9%, compared to 4.2% for OpenAI’s GPT-Transcribe, 4.9% for Google’s Gemini 3.1 Flash, and 7.6% for OpenAI’s Whisper-large-v3. In addition, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said that the company is focused on building “Humanist AI.” This means that the tools are designed around how people actually communicate and use technology.
What Is the Price Target for Microsoft?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 34 Buys and three Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average MSFT price target of $582.17 per share implies 57.4% upside potential.
