{
  "id": 5345956,
  "title": "Microsoft AI’s MAI-Transcribe-2 undercuts OpenAI, Google and ElevenLabs on price and speed",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/03/microsoft-ais-mai-transcribe-2-undercuts-openai-google-and-elevenlabs",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-03T14:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "VentureBeat",
    "slug": "venturebeat",
    "url": "https://venturebeat.com/infrastructure/microsoft-ais-mai-transcribe-2-undercuts-openai-google-and-elevenlabs-on-price-and-speed"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Microsoft AI unveiled MAI-Transcribe-2, a speech-recognition model claiming to outperform OpenAI, Google, and ElevenLabs in terms of speed, accuracy, and cost. Priced at $0.10 per hour of audio, the model represents a significant 72% price reduction from its initial $0.36 an hour offering. This cost-cutting for large-scale transcription at enterprise volumes, such as a bank or telecom processing 100,000 hours annually, transforms transcription from a negotiable line item to a predictable expense.\n\nMAI-Transcribe-2 supports transcription in 60 languages, up from 43 and 25 in previous models, and is designed for real-world, noisy audio conditions, making it more applicable to business scenarios than clean studio recordings. Key features include speaker diarization, which identifies who spoke in a multi-person recording, word-level timestamps for precise search and video alignment, keyword biasing for specialized terminology, and automatic language identification.\n\nThe model's standout features include a configurable output style with verbatim and clean modes for compliance needs, and code switching capabilities to handle conversations that switch languages mid-sentence. This comprehensive set of features is offered at a single price point, a stark contrast to specialty vendors charging premiums for each capability separately.\n\nMicrosoft benchmarks MAI-Transcribe-2 on three fronts: FLEURS, Artificial Analysis, and raw speed. While the model's average word error rate of 5.2% on FLEURS might seem low, it has increased from 3.7% in June due to broader language coverage. On Artificial Analysis, the model has climbed to second place, directly challenging ElevenLabs' Scribe v2 as the top performer. Speed-wise, the model is claimed to be 10 times faster than OpenAI's GPT-Transcribe, seven times faster than ElevenLabs Scribe v2, and five times faster than Google's Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, all of which are supported by independent evaluations.",
  "summary": "Microsoft AI on Thursday released MAI-Transcribe-2 , a speech-recognition model the company says is faster, more accurate, and cheaper than anything OpenAI , Google , or ElevenLabs currently sells. Then it priced the thing at 10 cents per hour of audio. That figure deserves a pause. When Microsoft AI shipped the first model in this line just five months ago, it charged $0.36 an hour . Thursday's…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}