Microsoft Corporation's (MSFT.US) annual developer conference: Windows moves towards the "era of intelligent bodies" betting on the next generation computing revolution and accelerating the move away from reliance on OpenAI.

On June 2, local time, Microsoft Corporation(MSFT.US) annual developer conference Build 2026 officially opened. Unlike the focus on Copilot upgrades or cloud service innovations in the past few years, this year's Build conference saw almost all major releases revolving around the core theme of AI intelligent agents. From the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box that can run billion-parameter models locally, to the Windows development platform that natively supports Linux containers and smart terminals; from the AI assistant Scout built on OpenClaw, to Microsoft Corporation's first inference model MAI-Thinking-1; to the new operating system Project Solara designed for intelligent agents, and the Microsoft Execution Containers(MXC) that provide security isolation mechanisms for AI intelligent agents, Microsoft Corporation showcased a clear vision of the future: Windows is evolving from a traditional operating system to the foundation platform of the intelligent agent era. In the past three years, the competition of large models has dominated the development direction of the artificial intelligence industry. But as model capabilities gradually converge, the focus of industry competition is shifting from "who has the strongest model" to "who can build the strongest AI ecosystem." And Build 2026 is Microsoft Corporation's answer to this question. Windows is no longer just an operating system Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows and Devices Business at Microsoft Corporation, stated at the conference that Microsoft Corporation is turning Windows into the most trusted platform for developers. This reflects Microsoft Corporation's reconsideration of the future computing paradigm. For the past forty years, the main task of Windows has been to run applications. Users would use a mouse and keyboard to open browsers, Office, Photoshop, and various enterprise software to complete their work. But in the AI era, Microsoft Corporation believes that more and more tasks will be handled by intelligent agents. In the future, users will no longer need to operate software manually, but will describe their goals to AI intelligent agents, which will then automatically execute tasks. Tasks such as writing emails, scheduling meetings, coding, deploying applications, etc., will be handled by intelligent agents. In this mode, the recipients of Windows services will no longer be just human users, but the multitude of AI intelligent agents running in the system. The Intelligent Terminal released at Build embodies this idea. Microsoft Corporation has embedded intelligent agent capabilities directly into Windows Terminal. Developers can call on AI to write code, debug, query, and execute complex tasks in the terminal environment without switching chat windows. At the same time, Microsoft Corporation also announced the release of WSL Containers, which integrates Linux container capabilities directly into the Windows system. Developers can now create, manage, and run Linux containers directly in the Windows environment, and intelligent agents can more efficiently access relevant resources to complete tasks. Microsoft Corporation even introduced the Coreutils tool set widely used in the Linux ecosystem into the Windows environment for the first time. These command-line tools, originally belonging to the Linux server world, can now run directly in Windows. At first glance, this is an upgrade in the development experience; but the deeper significance lies in Microsoft Corporation making Windows a more suitable operating system for intelligent agents to work on. Surface RTX Spark Dev Box: Building a new platform for AI development On the hardware front, one of the most anticipated products at Build 2026 is the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box. This mini development machine is equipped with the latest RTX Spark platform from NVIDIA Corporation(NVDA.US), with an Arm Holdings(ARM.US) architecture CPU and Blackwell GPU combination, and up to 128GB unified memory. Microsoft Corporation stated that this device can run large models with up to 1.2 trillion parameters locally. Unlike traditional development computers, the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box was designed from the beginning for AI development scenarios. Microsoft Corporation pre-installed development tools such as Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, etc., and optimized Windows 11 Pro, including enabling dark mode by default, simplifying the taskbar, removing the Widgets component, and enabling developer mode, among other enhancements. In the past few years, most AI applications relied on running in cloud data centers. But with advancements in model compression technology and terminal computing power, more and more inference tasks are starting to return to local devices. For enterprise customers, running models locally can not only reduce latency and cloud computing costs, but also help protect data privacy. Therefore, the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is more like a "developer playground" prepared by Microsoft Corporation for the intelligent agent era. Scout debuts: Microsoft Corporation embraces the OpenClaw ecosystem If Copilot is an AI assistant, then Scout, introduced by Microsoft Corporation, is more akin to a digital secretary. At the Build conference, Microsoft Corporation officially launched Scout, a persistent AI assistant built on the OpenClaw framework. It is worth noting that OpenClaw is one of the fastest-growing open-source intelligent agent frameworks this year, and its influence is seen by many industry insiders as the "Linux moment" of the intelligent agent era. Microsoft Corporation has been building its own AI ecosystem around Copilot, but by directly embracing OpenClaw this time, it sends an important signal: Microsoft Corporation hopes to become a significant participant in the intelligent agent ecosystem, rather than limiting itself to its own platform. Scout can collaborate deeply with Microsoft 365 applications such as Outlook, OneDrive, and Teams. It can help users organize emails, manage expense processes, schedule meetings, draft documents, and continuously monitor the user's work status to proactively perform tasks. For example, when it detects that a user is about to attend an important meeting, Scout can prepare background materials in advance. When traffic congestion may affect the journey, it can remind the user of the best departure time. Microsoft Corporation stated that there are already over 3,000 employees participating in internal tests of Scout. Meanwhile, Scout will also be an important part of Microsoft Corporation's "Autopilot Agents" system in the future, where each intelligent agent will have its independent identity and professional capabilities. For enterprise users, this means that in the future, every employee may have multiple digital employees working together. Accelerating the move away from dependence on OpenAI In addition to the intelligent agent layout, another highly anticipated update at Build 2026 comes from Microsoft Corporation's in-house model system. During the conference, Microsoft Corporation simultaneously released seven new models, with the most attention focused on the first inference model, MAI-Thinking-1. Microsoft Corporation stated that this model has 35 billion active parameters and a 128K context window, focusing on complex multi-step reasoning, long-text analysis, and code generation tasks. Inference models are considered an important direction for the next stage of AI competition. Compared to traditional large models, inference models are better at solving complex problems and can simulate human-like thought processes. In addition to MAI-Thinking-1, Microsoft Corporation also updated models covering areas such as image generation, speech generation, code generation, and speech transcription. This series of actions shows that Microsoft Corporation is continuously enhancing its own AI capabilities and gradually reducing its dependence on the OpenAI model system. For the capital market, this means that in the future, Microsoft Corporation will have greater strategic autonomy in the field of AI. Security first in the intelligent agent era As intelligent agents' capabilities continue to grow, they will come into contact with more and more core enterprise data. Emails, meeting records, financial documents, customer information, etc., could all become objects accessed by intelligent agents. Therefore, security is becoming the biggest concern for enterprises deploying intelligent agents. To address this challenge, Microsoft Corporation introduced Microsoft Execution Containers(MXC). MXC allows developers to set strict access boundaries for intelligent agents and run them in isolated sandbox environments. Microsoft Corporation also simultaneously released the OpenClaw Companion app to help users deploy and manage intelligent agents. In the future, whether it be Scout or other third-party intelligent agents, they will be able to run in secure controlled environments. For Microsoft Corporation, the importance of this technology is even as significant as the intelligent agents themselves. Because only by solving enterprise security issues will intelligent agents have the opportunity to truly enter core business processes. Project Solara: Betting on the future of intelligent agent hardware In addition to PCs, Microsoft Corporation also announced a forward-looking plan, Project Solara. This is a new operating system platform specifically designed for intelligent agent devices. Unlike Windows, Project Solara is built on top of the Android base and developed jointly by Microsoft Corporation, Qualcomm, and Mediatek. Microsoft Corporation showcased two reference designs. One is similar to a desktop intelligent terminal that can be awakened by facial recognition; the other is like a smart badge, with built-in cameras and biometric recognition capabilities that can record and understand the user's environment in real-time. Microsoft Corporation stated that intelligent agents will no longer be restricted to just the computer, but will be able to collaborate across devices. Tasks can freely flow between PC, desktop terminals, and wearable devices. While Microsoft Corporation will not be selling related products in the short term, Project Solara indicates that the company is already laying the groundwork for the next generation AI hardware ecosystem. Announcing the second-generation topological quantum chip Majorana 2 In addition to artificial intelligence, Microsoft Corporation also updated its quantum computing roadmap. At the Build conference, Microsoft Corporation announced the release of the second-generation topological quantum chip Majorana 2. Microsoft Corporation stated that the stability of quantum bits in the new chip has increased by over 1,000 times compared to the previous generation, with some quantum bits having a lifetime of over one minute. Microsoft Corporation attributes this breakthrough to a new material system, including lead-based superconductors and improved semiconductor structures. At the same time, Microsoft Corporation also announced the opening of the Microsoft Discovery platform. This platform has previously been used to assist in the development of Majorana chips and will now be open to research institutions to help accelerate material discovery and drug development through intelligent agent workflows. Microsoft Corporation expects that with the current pace of research and development, the company is on track to achieve a quantum computer with practical commercial value before 2029. Paving the way for Huang Renxun's intelligent agent PC blueprint Looking at Build 2026 alone, people see Microsoft Corporation's series of product layouts around intelligent agents. But if the timeline is extended to the Computex 2026 conference held earlier, the strategic logic behind these releases becomes even clearer. NVIDIA Corporation CEO Huang Renxun stated in his keynote speech at Computex that personal computers are undergoing the largest transformation since their inception forty years ago. He believes that in the future, users will be less directly operating software and more likely to complete tasks through AI intelligent agents. To achieve this goal, NVIDIA Corporation launched the RTX Spark platform, aiming to create a new generation of PCs specifically for the intelligent agent era. And the Windows intelligent agent framework, Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, Microsoft Scout, and Project Solara introduced by Microsoft Corporation at the Build conference perfectly complement the software and ecosystem parts of this blueprint. To some extent, Microsoft Corporation is taking on the role of the "operating system provider" for the intelligent agent era. NVIDIA Corporation provides the AI computing power platform, Arm provides the underlying CPU architecture, and Microsoft Corporation is responsible for building the software ecosystem to run intelligent agents. The three companies together paint a picture of the future redefining the computing platform around intelligent agents. Looking back at Microsoft Corporation's forty-year history, Windows' greatest success has been in becoming the core platform for application software ecosystems. The signals released at Build 2026 indicate that Microsoft Corporation hopes to replicate this success in the next decade. The difference now is that the main focus on the platform is no longer on applications but on intelligent agents. If the computing era of the past belonged to software, then the future that Microsoft Corporation is betting on belongs to intelligent agents.