For Microsoft, Suleyman says there are no shortcuts. He refuses to allow the company to “distill” from existing AI models. Distillation, the process of training smaller AI models on more sophisticated ones’ outputs, is how Chinese firms like DeepSeek have been able to create free, open-source versions of those made by the American frontier labs.Microsoft is building its own custom computer chips to work efficiently with its own AI models. And, Suleyman says, it’s tuning its models to work well w...