Microsoft Build 2025 Keynote: Key Takeaways

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivered the keynote address at Microsoft Build 2025, unveiling groundbreaking advancements in Artificial Intelligence across Microsoft 365 products and Azure. The event showcased Microsoft’s direction in the AI-dominated world, positioning itself as the core infrastructure for AI development and deployment for both seasoned and novice developers.

Key Announcements and Highlights

Microsoft 365 Copilot Multi-agent Orchestration

• Enables management of multiple AI agents across applications.
• Native integration with Microsoft Teams allows real-time agent invocation and task assignment.
• A new low-code tuning capability in Copilot Studio allowing organizations to customize AI models with internal company data without the need for dedicated data scientists.

Azure AI Foundry Improvements

• A unified platform supporting over 1,900 AI models, including:
  • Grok 3
  • Meta's Llama 4 suite
  • OpenAI's advanced reasoning models
  • Mistral Medium
  • Thousands of models from Hugging Face.
• Integration with Copilot Studio for easy deployment of fine-tuned, enterprise-specific AI agents.
• Agent Service is now Generally Available (GA).
• New model router capability automatically selects the optimal AI model for specific tasks and queries.

Open Source Contributions

• GitHub Copilot Chat extension is now fully open source, empowering developers with new agentic coding features.
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is fully open source, significantly improving Linux integration within Windows environments.
• Launch of the NLWeb initiative, promoting enhanced web accessibility and usability in the age of AI-driven agents. Learn more

Windows AI Features

• Native MCP support includes built-in registry integration with software such as Paint, the File System, and third-party applications (like Figma), directly connecting these tools to AI agents.
• Windows AI Foundry will replace the Copilot runtime, becoming a unified and reliable platform that supports the entire AI development lifecycle—from model selection and optimization to fine-tuning and deployment across client and cloud.

Additional Notable Announcements

• Integration of Azure Cosmos DB with Azure AI Foundry for streamlined data processing and AI deployment.
• Introduction of Microsoft Entra Agent ID, providing Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) specifically tailored for AI Agents.
• Introduction of Microsoft Purview for Agents, ensuring seamless governance and robust data access management across agent deployments.
• Launch of Microsoft Discovery (Preview), leveraging AI agents to accelerate scientific research and discovery.

Closing Thoughts

Advancements across GitHub Copilot and Copilot Studio emphasize Microsoft's continued mission to make software development easier and more accessible. These changes prompt important considerations concerning the evolving role of software engineers:

Where will human programmers add unique and valuable contributions within the software development lifecycle (SDL) as AI advances?

Watch the full keynote here