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Phi-4-reasoning-vision and the lessons of training a multimodal reasoning model

Microsoft just shipped Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B. A 15B multimodal reasoning model that rewrites what's possible at that scale.

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Why it matters

Microsoft's release of a 15B open-weight multimodal reasoning model signals a major shift toward reasoning-capable vision models at accessible scale, challenging the assumption that advanced multimodal reasoning requires massive closed models.

The key facts

5 to know
  1. Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B: 15 billion parameters

  2. Multimodal reasoning model (vision + language)

  3. Open-weight distribution via Microsoft Foundry, HuggingFace, GitHub

  4. Positioned for image captioning and vision-language reasoning tasks

  5. Published March 4, 2026 from Microsoft Research

Go to the source

Microsoft Researchmicrosoft.com

Publisher excerpt: We are pleased to announce Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, a 15 billion parameter open‑weight multimodal reasoning model, available through Microsoft Foundry (opens in new tab), HuggingFace (opens in new tab) and GitHub (opens in new tab). Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B is a broadly capable model that can…
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