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AI labs are shipping new models nonstop. Besides being better and faster than their predecessors, every new model isn't guaranteed to be a major step change, despite how the company's PR may wax poetic about them. Model strengths really emerge in context: Where are competitor models lacking or excelling? Which models have outstanding specialties, and which are just catching up to industry standards?
Also: How we test AI at ZDNET
Our Model Release Tracker helps you make sense of where models stand relative to each other, and whether they're worth a deeper look. While we don't test every model or model update on this list, we'll always include the key elements you need to know, along with our hands-on expert test, where applicable. We also include an Expert Score for certain models. Curious about how we test AI? Check out this breakdown of our process.
Here are the biggest model releases of 2026 so far and what to know about them. We'll update this list whenever a notable new model arrives.
MAI-Cyber-1-Flash
Microsoft | July 27, 2026
What it does: Microsoft's latest model exists inside MDASH, its agentic security hub designed to triage issues. The company said Cyber-1-Flash is built to detect "challenging vulnerabilities in complex codebases" and costs half of what leading models charge. The model scored more than 10 percentage points above Anthropic's Mythos, Google's Gemini, and OpenAI's just-released GPT-5.6 on CyberGym, a security reasoning benchmark.
Also: OpenAI's attack agent did exactly what it was told - just more relentlessly than expected
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