Microsoft Unveils 'Maia 300' Chip to Power Its AI Starting in 2027

Microsoft unveiled its third-generation artificial intelligence chip, "Maia 300," announcing that it will become the primary system for powering AI across its products starting in 2027, according to The Next Web.

The company explained that the chip delivers 40% more tokens per megawatt compared to the most powerful GPU systems, while a full rack provides up to seven times the output of "Maia 200."

Each rack houses 96 chips and consumes around 167 kilowatts, compared to about 142 kilowatts for an Nvidia GB300 rack containing 72 GPUs.

Microsoft expects to deploy these systems with capacities measured in gigawatts starting next year. This move is part of a race among major computing providers to reduce reliance on Nvidia chips and lower the cost of running AI models.

What do these terms mean?

Token: The smallest unit of text processed by an AI model, which can be a word or part of a word; power consumption is measured by the number of processed tokens.

Graphics Processing Unit (GPU): A chip originally designed for processing images, now widely used to train and run AI models.

Megawatt: A unit of measurement for electrical power equal to one thousand kilowatts, used to describe the scale of consumption in major data centers.