Microsoft just launched three new reasoning-focused, open-weights models in its Phi family — which outperform larger rivals at complex reasoning tasks while being small enough to run on phones and laptops.

• The flagship Phi-4-reasoning has just 14B parameters but outperforms OpenAI's o1-mini and matches DeepSeek's 67B model on key benchmarks.
• A smaller 3.8B parameter version called Phi-4-mini-reasoning can run on mobile devices while matching larger 7B models on math benchmarks.
• Designed for efficiency, the models aim to bring strong reasoning capabilities to constrained environments (like edge devices and Copilot+ PCs).
• All three models are open-source with permissive licenses, allowing unrestricted commercial use and modification by developers.

Why it matters: Microsoft continues to raise the bar for its small but powerful Phi, with the latest launch bringing extremely capable reasoning to models sized to fit on phones and laptops. It’s still early days in truly bringing system-integrated AI to devices, but Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs could be the biggest beneficiary of this reasoning boost.