Microsoft used its Build 2026 developer conference in San Francisco on June 2 to announce a sweeping vision for AI-native computing built around autonomous agents rather than traditional applications. The event covered six major areas: the MAI self-developed model family, an agent ecosystem built around Scout and GitHub Copilot, a Windows system-level AI security sandbox called MXC, Surface hardware, Project Solara, and developer governance frameworks.
Project Solara is the most forward-looking of these announcements. Microsoft built Solara on the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform, an enterprise version of Android the company developed for devices including Teams meeting-room hardware. Microsoft chose MDEP over Windows deliberately to run on smaller, lower-power devices while keeping IT management features including patch and over-the-air updates, device integrity, Microsoft Defender, Intune, and Entra ID sign-in.
Two concept devices demonstrate the platform. A badge-style wearable built on Qualcomm silicon targets on-the-go agent interaction for frontline workers. A desk companion built on MediaTek’s IoT SoC stays always on and always context-aware. The desk device can display Microsoft 365 data including Outlook events and Excel data. In the coming months, AccuWeather, Best Buy, CVS Health, Levi’s, and Target will begin pilots based on the reference designs.
Alongside Solara, Microsoft launched seven MAI models trained from scratch, including the flagship reasoning model MAI-Thinking-1, a coding model called MAI-Code-1-Flash, and MAI-Image 2.5 for image generation and MAI-Transcribe 1.5 for speech transcription across multiple languages. MAI-Thinking-1 uses a sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture with approximately 35 billion active parameters and a 256,000-token context window, currently available in private preview via Microsoft Foundry.
Satya Nadella closed the keynote by framing Build 2026 as a defining moment comparable to Azure’s launch in 2010.
“Every layer of the digital stack is being reimagined around AI,” Nadella said. “Agents are the new applications, models are the new infrastructure, and devices are the new sensors for understanding human context.” He also told developers: “You need to give them identities,” referring to the governance and policy infrastructure needed for agents to operate safely across enterprise workflows.
Project Solara is not something you need to stress about when it comes to your apps just yet. Right now, it’s just a handful of concept hardware and software, patiently waiting for those futuristic breakthroughs. The idea is for Solara to operate on a variety of specialized devices, with interfaces that can be created on the fly, all fueled by the incredible intelligence of models that Microsoft and others are confident will be here before we know it.
Industry analysts largely praised the software announcements while noting the hardware concepts resemble concept cars rather than shipping products. Microsoft has not announced general availability, commercial hardware pricing, or regional deployment timelines for Solara devices.
