Microsoft Build 2026: 7 big announcements

Microsoft just kicked off Build 2026 with keynotes from CEO Satya Nadella and other industry leaders. As expected, it was filled with announcements, from new Surface devices to personal assistants and updates on all of Microsoft’s in-house AI models.

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

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is designed for developers who want to run native AI models on their devices, working instead of Qualcomm’s dev kit has been discontinued. It comes with tools Nvidia’s new Arm-based Spark RTX chip and 128GB of shared memory, along with pre-installed software such as Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot. The Surface RTX Spark Dev box also comes with a pre-installed version of Windows 11 Pro with dark mode supported by default, a simple keyboard, and no widgets.

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

Microsoft is taking steps to make Windows better. This includes the addition of Coreutils, which the company describes as “Linux-like command-line tools that run naturally” on Windows 11. It also introduces the ability to create, run, and interact with Linux containers through its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), along with a new Intelligent Terminal Piece that provides information to the user that is supported by AI.

We got a glimpse of Project Solara, an Android operating system designed to support assistants on a variety of devices. Microsoft teamed up with Qualcomm and MediaTek to create a system, which can eventually work as a PC companion or share tasks between devices. At the keynote, Microsoft demonstrated several tools that the technology can use: a desktop and a digital badge.

Microsoft is launching a full-time assistant built on OpenClaw, an open-source AI platform that was announced earlier this year. The assistant, called Scout, works with Microsoft 365 apps including Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams. It’s designed to run in the background, helping businesses do things like organize calendars, manage financial reports, write emails, and more.

Scout is part of a a large group of “Autopilot” assistants. that Microsoft plans to implement, each of which will have its own “information”. Currently, Scout is rolling out desktop previews to Frontier customers in the US, but Microsoft plans to eventually make it available to the general public.

Microsoft is moving forward with its work to develop its own AI models instead of relying on those developed by OpenAI. They revealed seven new models on Build, including one that claims to be his first model. MAI-Thinking-1 offers 35 billion processing units and a 128K window that Microsoft says is designed for “complex multi-step instructions, long-term thinking and code generation.” It also announced updates to all of its graphics, audio, and coding models, as well as text.

As for OpenClaw, Microsoft is trying to make AI agents safer to bypass something called Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC). This allows driver developers to implement security measures that AI agents can access on their devices. Microsoft is also launching another OpenClaw program that will help you set up your own agent or integrate with an existing one, which will be run on sandbox.

Microsoft unveiled its next-gen quantum computing device during the event, called Majorana 2, which the company says could accelerate progress in the field. The upgraded chip contains qubits – units of information in quantum computing – that are 1,000 times more accurate. Microsoft says the performance increase is based on new products that use lead and other materials.

With the way things are going, Microsoft says it can achieve its goal of creating a useful computer by 2029.