Microsoft unveils Maia 300 AI chip, its primary inference system rolling out 2027
The Verge AI · rss · 2026-10-12
Microsoft announced Maia 300, its third-generation in-house AI chip, positioned as the "primary AI inference system" for Microsoft's products and services to reduce reliance on Nvidia GPUs.
Key points:
- Cloud EVP Scott Guthrie says Maia 300 should deliver 40% more tokens per megawatt versus leading GPU-based systems
- The chip is designed to handle the latest reasoning models and agentic workloads
- Production rollout is planned for 2027
It marks a key step in Microsoft's custom silicon strategy, focused on inference cost and efficiency rather than competing head-on with Nvidia on training.
More from Infra
- UK Minister Backs Hardware-Enabled AI Verification, Betting on Britain's Chip Design Expertise — S_OhEigeartaigh · 2026-10-12
- GPU rentals up 27% in six months while fixed-intelligence prices fell 63% — jon_durbin · 2026-10-12
- Broadcom's Hock Tan is betting the company on Anthropic and OpenAI succeeding — firstadopter · 2026-10-12
- AI providers processed 39 quadrillion inference tokens in September, up 7.9x YoY — SuB8u · 2026-10-12
- Cheap drones could torch a $50B data center, researcher urges anti-drone defense — Dr_Singularity · 2026-10-12
- OpenEnv Arena offers free GPU compute to train your environment, weights open sourced — ben_burtenshaw · 2026-10-12