Microsoft hosted its annual developer conference, Microsoft Build, on May 19, announcing a slew of updates. The latest edition of Microsoft Build saw Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella share how the tech giant is building the open agentic web, where AI agents interact, make decisions, and perform tasks for individuals, teams and companies. The company’s new updates will shape the software development lifecycle with AI, essentially making it easier to build more capable and secure AI agents, accelerate scientific discovery, and advance open standards and shared infrastructure and protocols.
“Today, at Build, we showed you how we are building the open agentic web. It is reshaping every layer of the stack, and our goal is to help every dev build apps and agents that empower people and orgs everywhere,” Nadella said in his post on X. Here is a list of some of the biggest announcements from this year’s Microsoft Build.
GitHub Copilot coding agent
“We are taking GitHub Copilot from being a pair programmer to peer programmer. You now have a full coding agent built right into GitHub. You can assign it issues – whether it’s bug fixes, new features, or ongoing code maintenance. And it will complete these tasks autonomously,” said Nadella.
GitHub Copilot has unveiled a new AI-powered coding agent that has been designed to automate regular development tasks and augment productivity, enabling developers to prioritise complex work. The agent can be assigned tasks through GitHub issues or Copilot Chat in Visual Studio Code. Once assigned, the agent begins a secure development environment using GitHub Actions, clones the repository, and analyses the codebase. Throughout this process, the agent commits changes to a draft pull request and offers session logs for transparency.
It is capable of managing tasks such as bug fixes, feature additions, code refactoring, and documentation improvements, especially in well-tested codebases. It also integrates context from related discussions and complies with custom repository instructions to align with project standards. Also, it has security measures in place that ensure that the agent’s contributions are reviewed carefully before they are integrated. It is currently available to Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ users across multiple platforms, including GitHub’s website, mobile app, and command-line interface.
Copilot Tuning
According to Nadella, Copilot can now learn your company’s unique tone and language. “It is all about taking that expertise you have as a firm and further amplifying it so everyone has access.”
Yet another major announcement was the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot Tuning, which is a low-code feature within Copilot Studio. This feature allows companies to customise AI models with their own data, process, and workflows. With this, now businesses will be able to create domain-specific AI agents without requiring any expertise in coding. Simply put, a legal firm can develop an agent that reflects its unique form and expertise, automating a range of tasks combining institutional knowledge with context specific to each client.
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The tech giant claims that all data remains within Microsoft’s secure 365 service boundary, ensuring privacy and compliance. Besides, the company also introduced multi-agent orchestration, a feature that allows multiple AI agents to work together and distribute tasks among themselves. This allows AI agents to manage complex, cross-functional tasks with ease. Essentially meaning, during an employee onboarding, AI agents from IT, HR, and marketing teams can work together to streamline the entire process.
Upgrades to Azure AI Foundry
This year’s Build conference also saw significant enhancements to Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft’s comprehensive platform for developing and deploying AI applications and agents. The platform now supports more than 10,000 models, including open-source, proprietary, and even task-specific models. It is allowing developers to select and fine-tune models based on their business needs. The Azure AI Foundry has expanded its model offerings to include Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini.
“Foundry is the complete app platform for building apps and agents. We are adding support for more models from Grok, Hugging Face, Meta, Mistral, and more. Plus: agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search, Foundry Agent Service, integration with Copilot Studio, and more. And we are ensuring the tools you already use for identity, management, and security will now all extend to agents too,” Nadella said.
Some of the key features of Azure AI Foundry include the Azure AI Agent Service, allowing the creation of agents that are capable of automating complex workflows and tasks.
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NLWeb
Microsoft also introduced NLWeb, which is an open-source project designed to simplify the integration of AI interfaces into websites. This new open project essentially allows developers to use natural language to interact with any website. Nadella likened it to HTML for the agentic web. Developers can now add a chat interface powered by their chosen AI model and proprietary data with just a few lines of code. This will also allow users to interact with a site’s content using queries in natural language.
On a deeper level the NLWeb operates as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, allowing websites to make their content available to AI agents within the MCP ecosystem. NLWeb enhances users’ experiences through AI-driven interactions by using existing structured data formats like Schema.org and RSS. This project aligns with the tech giant’s broader vision for an open agentic web where decentralised AI agents can perform tasks on behalf of users.
Microsoft Discovery
“We’re bringing together the full tech stack to help speed up science itself. Discovery uses agents to generate ideas, simulate results, and learn. A great example is this promising candidate for a coolant that doesn’t rely on forever chemicals,” said Nadella. Microsoft Discovery was one of the prominent announcements at the conference. It is a new AI-powered platform developed to transform research and development processes.
Microsoft Discovery uses agentic AI to automate complex tasks, allowing scientists and engineers to speed up innovation by streamlining data analysis and experimentation. By integrating with existing tools and datasets, Discovery essentially allows for seamless collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams.
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These advancements are part of Microsoft’s broader strategy to enhance AI integration in the workplace, encouraging companies to build tailored AI solutions and also supporting scientific breakthroughs through advanced AI technologies.