Microsoft's new coding model trails DeepSeek on price and performance

Microsoft released MAI Code 1.1 Flash, a code model for GitHub Copilot said to be 25% more token-efficient and a quarter the cost of its predecessor. In benchmarks it still loses to the cheaper DeepSeek V4 Flash on both price and performance.

Why it matters: It's a concrete data point in the widening gap between fast-moving open Chinese labs like DeepSeek and proprietary models that big US platforms bake into their own products largely to protect margins rather than to lead on capability. That tension will keep shaping which models developers actually choose to build on.