Microsoft’s ambitious push into custom AI chip development has reportedly hit a major roadblock. According to a report from The Information, the tech giant’s next-generation Maia AI chip, code-named Braga, will not enter mass production until 2026, at least six months later than initially planned.
Originally, Microsoft aimed to roll out the Braga chip to its data centers sometime in 2025. However, unexpected design revisions, high employee turnover, and internal staffing shortages have collectively caused delays in the chip’s development cycle. The report cites three sources involved with the project.
Despite being positioned as a high-performance AI chip, Braga is reportedly expected to underperform compared to Nvidia’s latest Blackwell GPUs, which were announced late last year and are already seeing strong traction in the AI space.
The delay is a significant setback for Microsoft, which has been aggressively developing its own chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia, whose graphics processors currently dominate the AI training and inference market.
Microsoft first introduced the Maia chip lineup in November 2023, signaling its intent to build a vertically integrated AI hardware ecosystem similar to rivals Google and Amazon.
Google has already made significant strides with its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), now in their seventh generation. Amazon is also moving fast with its Trainium3 AI chips, which are slated for release by the end of this year.
As the AI arms race intensifies, Microsoft’s delay could give Alphabet and Amazon Web Services a temporary edge in performance and cost-efficiency, particularly in their respective cloud and AI service offerings. Both companies have optimized their custom chips for internal workloads and are steadily making them available to customers.
Microsoft has yet to issue a public comment on the reported delay.