Microsoft Build 2026: Agents, agent platforms, and agent lifecycle
June 2, 2026
- **Microsoft Scout:** A new always-on personal agent for work built on OpenClaw and Work IQ.
Scout is designed to operate across Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, and local device actions, with governed Entra identity and admin policy controls.
It is available to Frontier organizations through an early experimental release.
Link: [Introducing Microsoft Scout](https://aka.ms/ProjectLobster-Blog). - **Microsoft Foundry agent updates:** Foundry added production-agent capabilities across build, ground, operate, and reach layers.
Announcements include hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service, Microsoft Agent Framework v1.0, Foundry toolboxes, Fireworks AI on Foundry, Foundry IQ knowledge bases, procedural memory, tracing and evaluation, agent optimizer, adaptive evaluations, Agent Control Specification, and one-click publishing to Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Links: [Microsoft Foundry updates](https://aka.ms/FoundryBuildNews), [Build and run agents at scale with Microsoft Foundry](https://aka.ms/BuildFoundryAgents), [What's new in Microsoft Foundry](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/foundry/whats-new-in-microsoft-foundry-build-2026/). - **Hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service:** Preview/near-GA hosted agent infrastructure with per-session sandboxing, isolated execution, persistent memory, elastic scale, sub-100 ms cold starts, and zero idle cost.
Link: [Foundry Agent Service](https://aka.ms/BuildFoundryAgents). - **Microsoft Agent Framework v1.0:** Generally available agent harness with skills, context, memory, middleware, and deterministic orchestration for agent workflows. - **Agent toolboxes in Foundry:** Preview tooling to unify access to web and file search, MCP, OpenAPI specs, and A2A protocol. - **Procedural memory:** Preview capability for agents to learn repeatable "how" knowledge across multiple runs, not only retrieve static facts. - **Agent optimizer:** Preview capability in Foundry Agent Service to turn traces and evaluations into ranked candidate improvements across prompts, tools, skills, and context, with diffs, audit, and rollback. - **One-click publishing to Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot:** Coming generally available next month, with identity and tenant policy flowing through automatically. - **Project Solara:** Early look at a chip-to-cloud platform for an open, multi-agent world, including concept reference designs for an agent-first badge device and an ambient desk companion.
Microsoft Build 2026: Azure, Fabric, data, and app platform
June 2, 2026
- **Rayfin:** Preview open-source SDK and CLI for generating typed, governed enterprise app backends--database, auth, storage, and access policies--and deploying them as managed services in Microsoft Fabric.
Data lands in OneLake by default.
Microsoft highlighted Replit integration for natural-language app prototyping to governed Fabric deployment.
Links: [Rayfin](https://aka.ms/rayfin), [Rayfin blog](https://aka.ms/rayfin-blog). - **Azure HorizonDB:** Preview fully managed PostgreSQL service for agentic applications, with high availability, read scale-out, advanced vector indexing, semantic search, in-database AI model access, and integration with Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Foundry, and GitHub Copilot in VS Code.
Microsoft cited up to 3x faster transactions and search performance than self-managed PostgreSQL.
Link: [Azure HorizonDB](https://aka.ms/HorizonDB-Build-blog). - **Fabric Data Warehouse GPU acceleration:** Early access preview for GPU-accelerated Fabric Data Warehouse query execution using NVIDIA accelerated computing.
Microsoft cited up to 7x faster internal benchmark results and a 5x early customer improvement at UNC Health.
Link: [GPU-accelerated Fabric Data Warehouse](https://aka.ms/GPUAcceleratedFabricDW). - **CoddSpeed:** Research behind GPU-accelerated Fabric Data Warehouse, named Best Industry Paper at SIGMOD 2026.
Link: [CoddSpeed](https://aka.ms/coddspeed). - **Azure Cosmos DB agentic retrieval and memory:** New retrieval and memory toolkits for agentic apps.
Link: [Cosmos DB agents](https://aka.ms/build26/CosmosDBAgents). - **Semantic reranking in Azure Cosmos DB:** Public preview.
Link: [Azure Container Apps Sandboxes](https://aka.ms/aca/sandboxes). - **AKS Build 2026 updates:** Link: [AKS at Build](https://aka.ms/aks/build26). - **Azure API Management updates:** Link: [Azure API Management at Build](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/integrationsonazureblog/whats-new-in-azure-api-management-at-microsoft-build-2026/4524683). - **Azure Logic Apps updates:** Link: [Azure Logic Apps at Build](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/integrationsonazureblog/whats-new-in-azure-logic-apps-at-microsoft-build-2026/4524685). - **Azure Files updates:** General availability of simpler, scalable file-share management and secure modern access to Azure Files on macOS with Microsoft Entra ID.
Links: [Azure Files management GA](https://aka.ms/MFS/GA), [Azure Files on macOS with Entra ID](https://aka.ms/azurefilesmacos). - **Azure Backup for Cosmos DB:** Public preview.
Link: [Azure Backup support for Cosmos DB](https://aka.ms/AzureBackupCosmosDBpreviewTechBlog). - **Microsoft Fabric and Databases:** Build 2026 updates for agentic apps across Fabric and Microsoft Databases.
Link: [Fabric and databases at Build](https://aka.ms/Azure-Data-Build26).
Microsoft Build 2026: GitHub and developer workflow
June 2, 2026
- **GitHub Copilot app:** Preview of a native desktop app for agentic development.
It can start from issues, pull requests, existing sessions, or ideas; uses git worktrees to separate agent sessions; supports pausing and resuming work; and can orchestrate multiple agent sessions in parallel through review, CI, and merge.
Link: [GitHub Copilot app](https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilot-app-the-agent-native-desktop-experience/?utm_source=live-blog-copilot-app-desktop-blog-cta&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=msbuild-2026). - **GitHub Copilot CLI / Build CLI:** Microsoft pointed developers to a GitHub Copilot CLI experience for connecting local projects to Build sessions.
Link: [Microsoft Build CLI](https://github.com/microsoft/Build-CLI). - **Agentic modernization:** Microsoft announced agentic modernization updates for using GitHub Copilot and agents to modernize applications.
Microsoft Build 2026: Infrastructure, silicon, and cloud operations
June 2, 2026
- **Maia 200:** Microsoft's second-generation AI accelerator is running in production in Iowa and Arizona, with Italy, Australia, and South Korea next.
Microsoft framed Maia 200 as improving tokens per dollar per watt in its fleet. - **Cobalt 200:** New Cobalt 200 VMs are in preview, and Cobalt 200 is deployed in more than 10 global regions.
Link: [Cobalt 200 VMs](https://aka.ms/Cobalt200VMs). - **Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC):** Open network protocol co-developed with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, OpenAI, and NVIDIA to improve workload routing and resiliency at extreme scale.
Microsoft is publishing tooling including libMRC, NCCL integrations, and a verbs shim library. - **Azure Lasv5 and Laosv5 VMs:** Preview of new VM series based on AMD EPYC Turin processors.
Link: [Lasv5 and Laosv5 VMs](https://aka.ms/Lasv5-Laosv5-Pr). - **Anyscale on Azure:** Public preview powered by Ray on AKS.
Link: [Anyscale on Azure](https://aka.ms/AnyscaleonAzureLaunchBlog). - **Foundry Local and Azure Local:** Updates for building, deploying, and governing sovereign AI and physical AI with Foundry Local on Azure Local.
Links: [Physical AI with Foundry Local and Azure Local](https://aka.ms/PhysicalAIBuildblog), [Sovereign AI with Foundry Local on Azure Local](https://aka.ms/FL_Build_2026). - **Azure Confidential Computing:** Confidential live migration and analytics for Azure Confidential Clean Rooms.
Links: [Confidential live migration](https://aka.ms/cvm-live-migration-at-build-2026), [Confidential Clean Rooms analytics](https://aka.ms/accrforanalytics-blog). - **Azure Infrastructure Resiliency Manager:** Public preview.
Link: [Infrastructure Resiliency Manager](https://aka.ms/InfrastructureResiliencyManager-PublicPreview-Blog). - **Azure Container Linux:** New container-focused Linux distribution.
Link: [Azure Container Linux](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceblog/introducing-azure-container-linux-acl/4523411). - **Azure Linux 4.0:** Public preview of Azure Linux 4.0.
Link: [Azure Linux 4.0](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/linuxandopensourceblog/announcing-azure-linux-4-0-purpose-built-for-azure-now-in-public-preview/4524267).
Microsoft Build 2026: Microsoft 365, Teams, Marketplace, and ecosystem
June 2, 2026
- **Teams platform for collaborative agents:** Build collaborative agents where work happens.
Link: [Teams Platform Build](http://aka.ms/TeamsPlatform-Build). - **Microsoft Marketplace:** Updates to help developers build, scale, and monetize apps and agents through Microsoft Marketplace.
Link: [Marketplace Build blog](https://aka.ms/MarketplaceBuildBlog2026). - **Microsoft for Startups:** Clearer path from AI development to enterprise growth.
Link: [Microsoft for Startups program updates](https://aka.ms/mfs-program-updates). - **Copilot design for work:** Microsoft highlighted a new look/design direction for Copilot.
Link: [Designing Copilot for work](https://aka.ms/designing-copilot-for-work). - **Mayo Clinic collaboration:** Mayo Clinic and Microsoft are collaborating on a frontier AI model for healthcare.
Link: [Mayo Clinic and Microsoft](https://news.microsoft.com/source/?p=24971).
- **MAI-Thinking-1:** Microsoft AI's first reasoning model, described as a 35B active-parameter model with a 256K context window, trained from scratch on clean, commercially licensed data without distillation from third-party frontier models.
It is open on Foundry in private preview / available to select early partners.
Link: [MAI Build announcement](http://aka.ms/MAI-Build). - **MAI-Image-2.5 and MAI-Image-2.5 Flash:** Microsoft image models for text-to-image and image-to-image workloads.
Microsoft said these are live in PowerPoint, rolling out on OneDrive, and landing on Foundry. - **MAI-Transcribe-1.5:** Speech transcription model with state-of-the-art accuracy across many languages and streaming planned. - **MAI-Voice-2 and flash variant:** Voice models with additional languages and voice options, available through Foundry/MAI Playground. - **MAI-Code-1 / MAI-Code-1-Flash:** Coding model tuned for GitHub Copilot and VS Code, focused on high performance and lower cost. - **Model ecosystem expansion:** MAI models will also be available on Fireworks AI, Baseten, and OpenRouter.
Fireworks AI on Foundry is generally available.
Link: [Microsoft Foundry model lifecycle / Fireworks AI](https://aka.ms/BuildFoundryModels). - **Frontier Tuning:** Private preview / early partner program for reinforcement-learning-based domain tuning inside the customer's compliance boundary.
Microsoft Build 2026: Microsoft IQ, grounding, and organizational context
June 2, 2026
- **Microsoft IQ:** Announced as the shared intelligence foundation for the agent era, bringing Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ together across GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, and Copilot Studio.
Microsoft said Microsoft IQ is generally available and designed to let developers build agents that reuse trusted organizational context across surfaces. - **Work IQ:** The workplace intelligence layer for agents, covering people, emails, documents, meetings, files, and work relationships across Microsoft 365 and organizational systems.
Microsoft said Work IQ is generally available this month, with Work IQ APIs generally available June 16.
Links: [Work IQ APIs](https://aka.ms/MBJ02yr26), [Work IQ production-ready intelligence](https://aka.ms/WorkIQAPI_GA). - **Fabric IQ:** A shared business semantic foundation for structured enterprise data and operational relationships.
Microsoft described the Fabric IQ ontology as available in preview.
Link: [Microsoft Build 2026 data announcements](https://aka.ms/Azure-Data-Build26). - **Foundry IQ:** A unified knowledge and retrieval layer for agents, combining enterprise knowledge, files, Azure SQL, MCP, and web grounding behind a serverless retrieval endpoint.
Link: [Foundry IQ](https://aka.ms/FoundryIQ). - **Web IQ:** New AI-native grounding APIs for fresh, attributable web information across web pages, news, images, and video.
Microsoft said Web IQ is available in limited access to select Azure customers and powers grounding experiences for Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT.
Links: [Web IQ](https://aka.ms/WebIQ), [Announcing Microsoft Web IQ](https://aka.ms/nextgengrounding).
Microsoft Build 2026 was framed as a full-stack developer platform event for the agentic AI era.
The announcement set spans Microsoft IQ and grounding, new Microsoft AI models, Microsoft Foundry agent infrastructure, local and cloud agent runtimes, Windows developer updates, GitHub Copilot workflows, Azure data and infrastructure, security governance, scientific discovery, and quantum computing.
The strategic message: Microsoft is positioning GitHub, Microsoft Foundry, Windows, Azure, Microsoft 365, Fabric, Copilot Studio, and new device/runtime work as one heterogeneous platform for building, operating, governing, and scaling agents.
The dominant theme is not one product launch but a platform architecture: agents need context, models, tools, secure execution, memory, evaluation, observability, governance, deployment surfaces, and developer-friendly infrastructure.
Microsoft used Build to announce or preview pieces across each layer, with many links routed through the Build 2026 news hub, live blog, product blogs, GitHub, Azure, Windows, Command Line, and Microsoft Learn.
- **Microsoft Discovery:** Generally available agentic AI platform for research and development workflows, with Discovery Engine agents that mimic the scientific method across knowledge, hypotheses, validation, and iteration.
Microsoft cited examples from BHP, Syensqo, and GSK.
Links: [Microsoft Discovery](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/discovery), [Discovery GA and app preview](https://aka.ms/MicrosoftDiscoveryBlog). - **Microsoft Discovery local app:** Free local app in preview for the broader scientific community, requiring a GitHub Copilot account. - **Majorana 2:** Next-generation quantum chip with topological qubits that Microsoft says are 1,000x more reliable than its previous generation, with average qubit lifetime of 20 seconds and instances up to one minute.
Microsoft tied the milestone to a path toward a scalable quantum machine by 2029 and a million qubits on a palm-sized chip.
Microsoft Build 2026: Security, trust, governance, and responsible AI
June 2, 2026
- **Agent 365 for local agents / Windows 365 for Agents:** Control plane and managed Cloud PC approach for observing, governing, and securing agents across frameworks and hosting environments. - **Agent Control Specification:** Open specification for where and how to apply controls in agent loops and runtime governance.
Link: [Agent Control Specification](https://commandline.microsoft.com/agent-control-specification-runtime-governance/). - **ASSERT:** Adaptive Spec-driven Scoring for Evaluation and Regression Testing, an open-source approach to turning written intent and policies into executable agent evaluations.
Link: [ASSERT](https://commandline.microsoft.com/assert-written-intent-executable-evals/). - **Build agents you can trust:** Microsoft described a new open trust stack for AI agents on any framework.
Link: [Responsible AI / trust stack](https://aka.ms/BuildFoundryRAI). - **MDASH:** Multi-model agentic security system with 100+ agents to identify exploitable bugs and provide context-aware fixes through Defender Portal.
Link: [MDASH](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/05/12/defense-at-ai-speed-microsofts-new-multi-model-agentic-security-system-tops-leading-industry-benchmark/). - **Security Build recap:** Security updates across agentic SDLC and Agent 365.
Link: [Build security blog](https://aka.ms/BUILD_SecurityBlog). - **Foundry IQ security and governance:** Links: [Foundry IQ security](https://aka.ms/FoundryIQ-security), [Foundry IQ data pipelines and extraction](https://aka.ms/foundryIQ-data), [Foundry IQ evaluations](https://aka.ms/FoundryIQ-evals).
Microsoft Build 2026: Windows, local agents, and developer devices
June 2, 2026
- **Surface RTX Spark Dev Box:** New compact AI developer box powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark, with up to 1 petaflop of AI compute, 128 GB unified memory, support for large local models, WSL2 with GPU passthrough and CUDA, VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and a custom Windows 11 Pro developer configuration.
Available later this year in the US via Microsoft.com.
Links: [Surface RTX Spark Dev Box](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-rtx-spark-dev-box?icid=DSM_Footer_WhatsNew_SurfaceRTXSparkDevBox), [Surface device blog](https://blogs.windows.com/devices/?p=263819), [microsoft.com/devbox](https://www.microsoft.com/devbox/). - **NVIDIA + Microsoft unified stack:** Partnership around Windows PCs powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark and NVIDIA DGX Station for Windows, targeting local-to-frontier agent workloads.
Links: [NVIDIA RTX Spark announcement](https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-windows-pcs-agents-rtx-spark), [NVIDIA DGX Station for Windows](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products/workstations/dgx-station-for-windows/). - **Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC):** Preview of OS-enforced containment for local agent workloads, letting developers and IT define policy requirements once and enforce them through Windows primitives.
Link: [Windows platform security for AI agents](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/?p=57808). - **OpenClaw on Windows:** Alpha/preview support for OpenClaw on Windows using MXC boundaries for local multi-step workflows.
Link: [Windows Build 2026 / OpenClaw](https://aka.ms/Windows-Build2026). - **NVIDIA OpenShell on Windows:** NVIDIA is collaborating with Microsoft to bring the OpenShell secure runtime to Windows using MXC, adding policy management, inference routing, and PII obfuscation. - **Windows Development Configurations:** Generally available developer configurations to set up ready-to-code Windows environments using a single WinGet configuration file with WSL, PowerShell 7, Git, GitHub CLI, VS Code, Python, and other tools. - **Intelligent Terminal:** Experimental Windows Terminal experience that gives agents context through ACP, including command history, working directory, exit codes, and git context. - **Windows Coreutils:** Linux-like command-line utilities coming to Windows to reduce friction for developers moving between Linux, macOS, WSL, containers, cloud, and local Windows environments. - **WSL containers:** Built-in way to create, run, and interact with Linux containers on Windows through a new `wslc.exe` CLI and API, with enterprise controls planned.
Preview coming soon. - **Windows AI APIs:** Expanded beyond Copilot+ PCs to support more hardware, including GPU support for Phi Silica and CPU support for video super resolution and live captions. - **Speech Recognition API:** Preview on-device speech-to-text API for microphone, stream, or file inputs with hardware-accelerated execution on CPU or NPU. - **Aion 1.0 Instruct:** Preview next-generation Windows small language model for on-device summarization, rewrites, intents, accessibility, Edge integration, and open weights. - **Aion 1.0 Plan:** Coming 14B-parameter reasoning and tool-calling model with 32K context, shipping in-box with Windows to support local agentic workflows. - **Windows 365 developer image:** Preview Windows 11 developer configuration image for Cloud PCs, preconfigured with VS Code, Git, GitHub CLI, WSL2 with Ubuntu, and extensibility for project tools.
Link: [Windows 365 developer support](https://aka.ms/W365Build26Blog). - **Windows 365 for Agents:** Cloud PCs for secure, managed agent workloads, available through Agent 365 tools and preview in Copilot Studio, with Entra ID, Intune, policy enforcement, legacy/UI/API app access, and consumption-based pricing.
Link: [Windows 365 for Agents pricing](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365/agents/pricing-paygo-always-available).
- The corpus expects deeper Copilot integration into the Windows shell, OS-level agent surfaces, and developer tooling aligned with Microsoft's long-running agentic-OS thesis. - Watch area: whether Windows becomes an orchestration layer for local, cloud, and enterprise agents rather than simply a host for Copilot Chat.
- Build is expected to connect Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Agent 365, and enterprise governance into a more unified agent platform. - Adjacent corpus items in April and May track Copilot in OneDrive, admin controls, employee self-service agents, and Microsoft 365 agent governance.
- The corpus repeatedly tracks MCP, OpenClaw-like agents, GitHub Copilot Workspace, and agent runtime standards; Build is expected to clarify Microsoft's role across those interfaces.
The corpus mentions Microsoft Build 2026 less frequently than Google I/O or WWDC, but the mentions are high signal: Build is framed as Microsoft's formal developer-platform moment for AI-native Windows, Copilot, Azure AI Foundry, first-party MAI models, and operating-system-level agents. The main preview item points to a June 2 opening in San Francisco with Satya Nadella keynoting and a theme described as the “AI takeover of Windows.”
Microsoft Build 2026 Preview: Agents, Copilot, Azure AI Foundry, and Open Models — Overview
May 27, 2026
The corpus frames Microsoft Build 2026 as an agentic AI platform preview: Copilot moves from assistant to autonomous workflow participant, Azure AI Foundry becomes the enterprise agent/model control plane, Windows gains local AI capabilities, and Microsoft leans into open-source models, governance, cost controls, and secure deployment. Earlier Build-focused corpus files also describe GitHub Copilot coding agent, NLWeb, MCP, Copilot Studio multi-agent orchestration, and Foundry Local as the pillars of Microsoft's agent strategy.