Microsoft AI releases MAI-Transcribe-2, claims cheapest and fastest speech recognition

Microsoft AI

Audio official + media 3 src. ~1 min

MAI-Transcribe-2 transcribes 60 languages with speaker diarization, word-level timestamps, code-switching, and verbatim/clean modes, at a launch price of $0.10 per hour of audio (about 72% below its April predecessor). Microsoft claims No. 1 on the FLEURS benchmark (5.2% average WER) and, per Artificial Analysis, 10x the speed of OpenAI's GPT-Transcribe and 7x ElevenLabs Scribe v2; available in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground.

Why it matters

price floor for STT APIs — aggressive commoditization of voice-AI infrastructure

Importance: 3/5

notable release with aggressive pricing claims, three independent sources

speech-to-text release diarization

Sources

official MAI-Transcribe-2 is the fastest, most accurate and cheapest speech recognition model in the world

media Microsoft AI's MAI-Transcribe-2 undercuts OpenAI, Google and ElevenLabs on price and speed

media Microsoft's MAI-Transcribe-2 model beats OpenAI and Google while costing just $0.10 per hour