Microsoft Build 2026: Aion 1.0 Instruct, Plan AI models announced
What's the story
Microsoft started its annual developer conference, Build 2026, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI). Among the major announcements was an expansion of Windows AI APIs to support more hardware and GPU acceleration for Phi Silica. Two types of Aion 1.0 models were also announced. Let us take a look.
API expansion
Speech recognition API and Aion 1.0 Instruct
Microsoft launched a new Speech Recognition API in preview, which allows real-time speech-to-text processing on devices. This can be done through microphones, audio streams, and files. Another major announcement was Aion 1.0 Instruct, a next-generation small language model for on-device workloads such as text summarization as well as intent detection.
Model 2
Aion 1.0 Plan
Microsoft also announced the Aion 1.0 Plan, a reasoning and tool-calling model with 14 billion parameters. This model will be integrated into Windows to support agentic workflows on local devices. In addition to these AI models, Microsoft launched the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box. It is a compact system designed for AI developers with NVIDIA RTX Spark silicon delivering up to one petaflop of performance.