Microsoft releases MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming, topping real-time speech-to-text ranking

Microsoft AI released its first real-time speech-to-text model, ranking #1 of 38 on Artificial Analysis' streaming word-error-rate (WER) benchmark. It reports 2.5% WER at about 0.13s latency across 60 languages, at $0.54 per hour during introductory pricing, in public preview on Foundry.

Why it matters: Microsoft is now shipping its own first-party models that compete head-on with specialist speech vendors, reducing reliance on partners. Together with Qwen's 60-language translator and Grok's transcription gains, real-time speech is becoming a crowded, fast-commoditizing category.