Microsoft today launched MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a lower-cost, higher-speed variant of its flagship text-to-image model that the company says delivers production-ready quality at nearly half the price. The release, available immediately in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground with no waitlist, marks the fastest turnaround yet from Microsoft’s in-house AI superintelligence team — and the clearest signal that Redmond is serious about building a self-sufficient AI stack that doesn’t depend on OpenAI. The new model is priced at $5 per million text input tokens and $19.50 per million image output tokens, a roughly 41% reduction from MAI-Image-2’s pricing of $5 and $33, respectively, for those same tiers. Microsoft says the model runs 22% faster than its flagship sibling and achieves 4x greater throughput efficiency per GPU, as measured on NVIDIA H100 hardware at 1024×1024 resolution.

Full report : Microsoft debuts MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a faster version of its flagship text-to-image model that it says offers production-ready quality at nearly 50% the cost.