Microsoft Build 2026: the 7 biggest announcements - The Verge

The Build 2026 keynote was almost all about AI.

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Microsoft just kicked off Build 2026 with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella and other company leaders. As expected, it was filled with announcements, ranging from new Surface hardware to an always-on personal assistant and updates across Microsoft’s in-house AI models.

If you didn’t watch the event live, you can catch up on all the latest news in the roundup below.

A mini Surface PC designed for AI development

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is geared toward developers who want to run local AI models on their device, serving as a substitute for Qualcomm’s canceled dev kit. It comes equipped with Nvidia’s new Arm-based Spark RTX chip and 128GB of unified memory, along with preinstalled apps like Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot. The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box also has a preconfigured version of Windows 11 Pro with dark mode enabled by default, a simplified taskbar, and no widgets.

Microsoft hasn’t revealed pricing or the full list of specs yet, but the device will be available in the US later this year.

Developer-optimized Windows updates

Microsoft is taking steps to make Windows more developer-friendly. That includes the addition of Coreutils, which the company describes as “Linux-like command-line utilities that run natively” on Windows 11. It’s also launching the ability to create, run, and interact with Linux containers through its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), along with a new Intelligent Terminal that provides context to a developer’s preferred AI-powered agent.

An OS designed to connect AI agents across devices

We got a glimpse at Project Solara, an Android-based operating system designed to run agents across a variety of devices. Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm and MediaTek to develop the system, which could eventually work as a companion to a PC or hand off tasks between devices. During the keynote, Microsoft showed off a couple of sample devices that the tech might run on: a desktop hub and a digital badge.

Microsoft jumps on the OpenClaw bandwagon with Scout

Microsoft is launching an always-on assistant built on OpenClaw, the open-source AI platform that gained popularity earlier this year. The assistant, called Scout, works with Microsoft 365 apps including Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams. It’s designed to perform tasks in the background, helping businesses do things like organize calendars, manage expense reporting, write emails, and more.

Scout is part of a broader set of “Autopilot” agents that Microsoft plans on launching, each of which will have its own “identity.” For now, Scout is launching in desktop preview for Frontier customers in the US, but Microsoft plans to eventually make it available to more people.

Microsoft’s first in-house reasoning AI model

Microsoft is pushing ahead with its work to make its own AI models instead of relying on those created by OpenAI. It revealed seven new models during Build, including one that it says is its first reasoning model. MAI-Thinking-1 offers 35 billion active parameters and a 128K context window that Microsoft says is designed for “complex multi-step instructions, long-context reasoning and code generation.” It also announced updates across its models focused on image, voice, and code generation, as well as transcription.

Windows adds guardrails for OpenClaw and other AI agents

Speaking of OpenClaw, Microsoft is trying to make the AI agents safer to run through something called Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC). This allows developers to set guardrails for what AI agents can access on their devices. Microsoft is also launching an OpenClaw companion app that will allow you to set up your own agent or connect to existing ones, which will run in a sandboxed environment.

A more stable quantum computing chip

Microsoft revealed its next-gen quantum computing chip, called Majorana 2, which the company says could speed up its progress in the field. The upgraded chip contains qubits — the units of information in quantum computing — that are 1,000 times more accurate. Microsoft attributes the boost in performance to a new material stack that uses lead and other compounds.

With the way things are progressing, Microsoft says it could reach its goal of making a practical quantum computer by 2029.

- Emma Roth

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