Today is the day. Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI is officially available!

At a time when technology dominates the headlines, the conversation I see most often on LinkedIn is deeply human: what does AI mean for my job and my career?

And that makes sense. Careers once felt more predictable. Titles defined what you did. Progress looked like a ladder. That model has been evolving for years, but AI is accelerating the shift.

The most important truth about this moment is that the outcome isn’t written yet. The new world of work is being assembled right now, task by task, policy by policy, business by business. It will reflect the choices of the people who show up to build it.

That’s why Aneesh Raman and I wrote this book.

Open to Work is a practical guide informed by what we see across the global labor market and insight into the tools millions of people use every day. It’s for every person asking what comes next for their job, their career, their company or their community.

With help from experts and everyday LinkedIn members, it shows you how to engage with AI before you have to, how to adapt by focusing on what you can control and how to become irreplaceable by leaning into what makes you uniquely you.

And those ideas don’t just apply to individuals, they guide how we as Microsoft and LinkedIn are building for this moment. At the intersection of how work gets done and how careers get built, our shared goal is to connect people to opportunity and turn the tools they use every day into a canvas for human and AI collaboration at scale. Done right, that’s how AI expands opportunity and helps people build confidence and momentum in their careers.

We’ve always believed technology should serve people. AI should help humans. Not the other way around. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when we all decide to make it true.

If you want to go deeper on Open to Work, listen to my conversation with Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith on his Tools and Weapons podcast.

Open to Work is available now at linkedin.com/opentowork.

Ryan Roslansky is the CEO of LinkedIn and Executive Vice President of Microsoft Office, where he leads engineering for products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Copilot. Through these roles, Ryan is shaping where work goes next to unleash greater economic opportunity for the global workforce.

The post Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Today is the day. Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI is officially available! At a time when technology dominates the headlines, the conversation I see most often on LinkedIn is deeply human: what does AI mean for my job and my career? And that makes sense. Careers once felt…
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Microsoft combines accelerated computing with cloud scale engineering to bring advanced AI capabilities to our customers. For years, we’ve worked with NVIDIA to integrate hardware, software and infrastructure to power many of today’s most important AI breakthroughs.

What’s new at NVIDIA GTC

• Expanded Microsoft Foundry capabilities to build, deploy and operate production-ready AI agents on NVIDIA accelerators and open NVIDIA Nemotron models
• New Azure AI infrastructure optimized for inference-heavy, reasoning-based workloads, including the first hyperscale cloud to power on next-generation NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 systems
• Deeper integration across Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Fabric and NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and open frameworks to support Physical AI systems from simulation to real‑world operations

From Frontier models to production-ready agents

At the foundation of this system is Microsoft Foundry: serving as the operating system for building, deploying and operating AI at enterprise scale. Foundry builds on Azure to bring together models, tools, data and observability into a single system designed for production agents. Today we’re expanding those capabilities across Foundry Agent Service and NVIDIA Nemotron models.

The next-generation Foundry Agent Service and Observability in Foundry Control Plane are now generally available, enabling organizations to build and operate AI agents at production scale. Foundry Agent Service allows teams to quickly develop agents that reason, plan and act across tools, data and workflows. Once created, Foundry Control Plane provides the developer end-to-end visibility into agent behavior, unlocking both developer productivity as well as enterprise trust. Companies such as Corvus Energy are already using Foundry to replace manual inspection workflows with agent-driven operational intelligence across their global fleet.

We are further simplifying the path from prototype to production with the availability of Voice Live API integration with Foundry Agent Service, in public preview, which enables developers to build voice-first, multimodal, real-time agentic experiences. This pairs with the general availability of a refreshed Microsoft Foundry portal and expanded integrations for Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma AIRS and Zenity, delivering deeper builder experiences and runtime security across the entire agent lifecycle.

NVIDIA Nemotron models are also now available through Microsoft Foundry, joining the widest selection of models on any cloud, including the latest reasoning, frontier and open models. This bolsters our recent partnership announcement bringing Fireworks AI to Microsoft Foundry, enabling customers to fine-tune open-weight models like NVIDIA Nemotron into low-latency assets that can be distributed to the edge.

Scaling AI infrastructure for the world’s most demanding workloads

Inference AI workloads are reshaping cost, performance and system design requirements. To operationalize agentic AI at scale, customers need purpose-built infrastructure for inference‑heavy, reasoning‑based workloads that can be deployed and operated consistently across global and regulated environments.

Microsoft’s AI infrastructure approach is engineered to seamlessly bring next-generation NVIDIA systems into Azure datacenters that are designed for power, cooling networking and rapid generational upgrades. This allows our customers to move with speed and agility and stay at the leading edge from generation to generation.

In less than a year, we’ve deployed hundreds of thousands of liquid-cooled Grace Blackwell GPUs across our global datacenter footprint, and now we are excited to be the first hyperscale cloud to power on NVIDIA’s newest Vera Rubin NVL72 in our labs. Over the next few months, Vera Rubin NVL72 will be rolled out into our modern, liquid-cooled Azure datacenters.

Microsoft’s infrastructure innovation with NVIDIA also extends to sovereign and regulated environments to give customers control of both where AI runs and how it evolves over time. Recently, we announced Foundry Local support for modern infrastructure and large AI models, and today we now have initial support for NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform on Azure Local, extending accelerated AI capabilities to customer-controlled environments. This approach allows organizations to plan for next-generation AI workloads, including reasoning-based and agentic systems, while maintaining Azure-consistent operations, governance and security through our unified software layer with Azure Arc and Foundry Local.

Bringing AI into the physical world

As AI moves beyond digital experiences, Microsoft and NVIDIA are collaborating to support the next wave of Physical AI. At GTC, this work centers on NVIDIA Physical AI Data Factory Blueprint, with Microsoft Foundry as the platform for hosting and operating Physical AI systems on Azure at cloud scale.

By integrating this blueprint with Azure services as part of a Physical AI Toolchain, Microsoft enables developers to build, train and operate physical AI and robotics workflows that connect physical assets, simulation and cloud training environments into repeatable, enterprise-grade pipelines. To support, we are introducing a public Azure Physical AI Toolchain GitHub repository integrated with the Nvidia Physical AI Data Factory and with core Azure services.

To further the impact of AI in real‑world, physical environments, today Microsoft and NVIDIA are deepening the integration between Microsoft Fabric and NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, connecting live operational data with physically accurate digital twins and simulation. This allows organizations to see what’s happening across their physical systems, understand it in real time and use AI to decide what to do next. In practice, customers in manufacturing and operations and beyond are using this approach to move beyond dashboards and alerts to coordinated, AI‑driven action across machines, facilities and workflows.

From innovation to impact

Microsoft is delivering reliable, production‑scale AI by bringing together its global AI infrastructure, platforms and real‑world systems with the latest innovation from NVIDIA. For customers, this means the ability to operate intelligence continuously, running inference-heavy, reasoning-based and physical AI workloads with the performance, security and governance required for real businesses and regulated industries.

Whether powering always-on agents, scaling next-generation AI infrastructure or deploying intelligent systems in factories, energy facilities and sovereign environments, Microsoft and Nvidia are helping customers move faster from insight to action.

Yina Arenas leads product strategy and execution for Microsoft Foundry, overseeing the end–to–end AI product portfolio, infrastructure, developer experiences and foundation model integration across OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek and others. She delivers an enterprise ready, production grade AI platform trusted by global customers for secure, reliable and scalable AI.

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Microsoft combines accelerated computing with cloud scale engineering to bring advanced AI capabilities to our customers. For years, we’ve worked with NVIDIA to integrate hardware, software and infrastructure to power many of today’s most important AI breakthroughs. What’s new at NVIDIA GTC Expanded Microsoft Foundry capabilities to build, deploy and operate production-ready AI agents on…
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Today Microsoft is announcing:

• Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Expanded model diversity with Claude and next-gen OpenAI models available today
• General availability of Agent 365 on May 1 for $15 per user
• General availability of the new Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite on May 1 for $99 per user¹

Frontier Transformation is a holistic reimagining of business, aligning AI with human ambition to achieve an organization’s highest aspirations. It is the next evolution of AI Transformation — not only do we need to deliver efficiency and productivity, but we need to democratize intelligence and do more for humanity. Companies do not want or need more AI experimentation. They need AI that delivers real business outcomes and growth.

In my daily conversations with customers and partners, they typically question what the most important components of an AI solution are. Is it the model? Is it silicon? At Microsoft, we believe the two most essential elements of Frontier Transformation are Intelligence + Trust. Organizations need to harness their own unique work intelligence as they build agents and solutions; and all AI artifacts across their technology stack must be observed, managed and secured to ensure they are delivering value responsibly. 

Intelligence that shows up in real work 

I often say that zero-shot artifact creation is nothing more than a parlor trick. Models can reason over data, produce draft documents, presentations and spreadsheets, but they do not understand work. Real differentiation comes from intelligence — deep work context, embedded in the tools people already use. AI should amplify your intelligence but do so in a manner that protects your differentiation and unique value.

Work IQ amplifies an individual’s IQ by tapping into your organization’s IQ. It is the intelligence layer that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to know how you work, with whom you work, and the content upon which you collaborate. That is why Copilot is faster, more accurate and more trusted than solutions built on models and connectors alone.

This month, we are unleashing Work IQ with our next generation of agentic experiences in Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Employees will have an enhanced chat experience in Copilot with the ability to create and augment artifacts, and the power to build their own agents within the canvas they work in every day.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is model diverse by design. Rather than betting on a single model, we built a system that makes every model useful at work. Customers get the choice, performance and flexibility in an open, heterogenous environment.  Copilot leverages leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, operating openly across clouds and data services without locking customers in. Claude is now available in mainline chat in Copilot via the Frontier program, alongside the latest generation of OpenAI models.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3 is not just a singular release of new capabilities but rather a commitment to continuous innovation. We will bring frontier capabilities with enterprise promises for our customers in an open and model diverse manner. Another great example of this is Copilot Cowork, which is in research preview. Built in close collaboration with Anthropic, we are bringing the technology that powers Claude Cowork into Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable long-running, multi-step work that unfolds over time.  Learn about our Wave 3 news.

These announcements come as our customers across industries are already seeing the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft recently delivered its strongest quarter yet with Copilot, with paid seats growing more than 160% year over year and daily active usage up ten times, as customers increasingly make Copilot a core part of everyday work. Expansion is also accelerating as the number of customers deploying Copilot at significant scale — more than 35,000 seats — tripled year over year. Just last week, Mercedes Benz announced a global rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot, following recent investments from NASA, Fiserv, ING, the University of Kentucky, the University of Manchester, the U.S. Department of the Interior and Westpac. This is in addition to the 90 percent of the Fortune 500 who now use Copilot.

Trust: from agent experimentation and sprawl to enterprise control 

The speed of agent development and proliferation tells us customers see value, but without guardrails the pace of adoption turns into blind spots, diminished ROI and real security risk. As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, trust is nonnegotiable. IDC predicts 1.3B agents in circulation by 2028, and 80% of the Fortune 500 are already using Microsoft agents, led by operationally complex industries like manufacturing, financial services and retail.

That is why I am excited to announce the May 1 general availability of Microsoft Agent 365, the control-plane for AI agents. Priced at $15 per user, Agent 365 gives IT and security leaders a single place to observe, govern, manage and secure agents across the organization — using the same infrastructure, applications and protections they rely on to manage people today.

We are seeing tremendous momentum with our preview customers. In just two months, tens of millions of agents have appeared in the Agent 365 Registry. We have tens of thousands of customers that are already adopting Agent 365 to securely govern and scale AI agents across enterprise workflows.

At Microsoft, we are also using Agent 365 as Customer Zero and the early signals are clear. We now have visibility into more than 500,000 agents across the company with the most widely used focused on research, coding, sales intelligence, customer triage and HR self-service. That adoption is translating into real work. Over the past 28 days alone, agents have been generating more than 65,000 responses every day for employees. This is evidence that we are not simply experimenting, we are embedding agents in the flow of everyday work and empowering human ambition.

Introducing the Frontier Suite

To meet this demand, I am thrilled to announce we are bringing Intelligence + Trust together with Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite. Microsoft 365 E7 unifies Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365 into a single solution powered by Work IQ and integrated with the apps and security stack customers already rely on. It includes Microsoft Entra Suite and advanced Defender, Intune and Purview security capabilities, delivering comprehensive protection across agents and employees.

Customers have told us E5 alone is no longer enough; they do not want multiple tools stitched together, they want one trusted solution. At $99 per user, E7 is priced below purchasing these capabilities à la carte, giving customers a simpler, more cost-effective way to deploy enterprise AI at scale.

With the general availability of Agent 365 and the latest agentic experiences in Microsoft 365 Copilot offered as one Frontier suite, AI moves from experimentation to durable, enterprise-wide value, built on a foundation of Intelligence + Trust. This is how we make Frontier Transformation real. Microsoft is not just imagining the future of AI, we are empowering organizations across industries and around the world to build it.

 
¹Microsoft 365 E7 is available with and without Teams.

The post Introducing the First Frontier Suite built on Intelligence + Trust appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Today Microsoft is announcing: Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot Expanded model diversity with Claude and next-gen OpenAI models available today General availability of Agent 365 on May 1 for $15 per user General availability of the new Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite on May 1 for $99 per user1 Frontier Transformation is a…
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As digital sovereignty becomes a strategic requirement, organizations are rethinking how they deploy critical infrastructure and AI capabilities under tighter regulatory expectations and higher risk conditions. Microsoft’s approach to sovereignty is grounded in enabling enterprises, public sectors and regulated industries to participate in the digital economy securely, independently and on their own terms. The Microsoft Sovereign Cloud brings together productivity, security and cloud workloads to span both public and private environments. Customers can choose the right control posture for each workload, through a continuum of sovereign options protecting against fragmenting their architecture or increasing operational risk. Trust is built on confidence: confidence that data stays protected, controls are enforceable and operations can continue under real-world conditions.  

To support these confidential environments, Microsoft offers full stack capabilities that support customers across connected, intermittently connected and fully disconnected modes. Today’s expansion of capabilities includes three major updates:

• Azure Local disconnected operations (now available) – Organizations can now run mission-critical infrastructure with Azure governance and policy control, with no cloud connectivity, optimizing continuity for sovereign, classified or isolated environments. 

• Microsoft 365 Local disconnected (now available) – Core productivity workloads, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and Skype for Business Server can run fully inside the customer’s sovereign operational boundary on Azure Local, keeping teams productive even when disconnected from the cloud. 

• Foundry Local adds modern infrastructure capabilities and support for large AI models – Organizations can now bring large AI models into fully disconnected, sovereign environments with Foundry Local. Using modern infrastructure from partners like NVIDIA, customers with sovereign needs will now be able to run multimodal models locally on their own hardware, inside strict sovereign boundaries enabling powerful, local AI inferencing in fully disconnected environments. 

This delivers a truly localized full stack experience built on Azure Local infrastructure and Microsoft 365 Local workloads, designed to stay resilient across any connectivity condition, with large models being part of Foundry Local extending the stack to run advanced multimodal models locally, securely, even when fully disconnected. Customers can now help maintain uninterrupted operations, keep mission critical workloads protected and apply consistent governance and policy enforcement, while keeping data, identities and operations within their sovereign boundaries.

Azure Local runs critical infrastructure locally, even when disconnected 

For workloads with specialized requirements, Azure Local provides the on-premises foundation with consistent Azure governance and policy controls. With Azure Local disconnected operations, management, policy and workload execution stay within the customer-operated environments, so services continue running securely even when environments must be isolated or connectivity is not available. Using familiar Azure experiences and consistent policies, organizations can deploy and govern workloads locally without depending on continuous connection to public cloud services. Azure Local is designed to scale with mission-critical needs from smaller deployments to larger footprints that support data-intensive and AI-driven workloads. Customers can start fast, expand over time and maintain a unified operational model, all within their sovereign boundary.

Operating in disconnected environments surfaces constraints that go beyond traditional cloud assumptions: External dependencies may be unacceptable, connectivity may be intentionally restricted and operational continuity is a business imperative. 

“The availability of Azure Local disconnected operations represents a breakthrough for organizations that need control over their data without sacrificing the power of the Microsoft Cloud. For Luxembourg, where digital sovereignty is not just a principle but a strategic necessity, this model offers the resilience, autonomy and trust our market expects. By combining Microsoft’s technological leadership with Proximus NXT’s sovereign cloud expertise, we are enabling our customers to innovate confidently — even in fully disconnected mode,” said Gerard Hoffmann, CEO Proximus Luxembourg. 

Microsoft 365 Local keeps productivity and collaboration available in fully disconnected environments 

As sovereign environments move into disconnected environments, keeping people productive becomes just as critical as keeping infrastructure online. Building on more than a decade of delivering and supporting these services, Microsoft 365 Local disconnected brings that continuity to the productivity layer, delivering Microsoft’s core server workloads — Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and Skype for Business Server supported through at least 2035 — directly into the customer’s sovereign private cloud.  

With Microsoft 365 Local, teams can communicate, share information and collaborate securely within the same controlled boundary as their infrastructure and AI workloads. Everything runs locally, under customer-owned policies, with full control of data resiliency, access and compliance. By operating with Azure-consistent management and governance, customers get the productivity experience they rely on, designed to stay resilient and secure even when offline. 

Bringing large models and modern infrastructure to Foundry Local 

With the availability of larger models and modern infrastructure as part of the Foundry Local portfolio, Microsoft is enabling customers with highly secure environments the ability to run multimodal, large models directly inside their sovereign private cloud environments. This brings the richness of Microsoft’s enterprise AI capabilities to on-premises systems, complete with local inferencing and APIs that operate completely within customer-controlled data boundaries.  

Expanding beyond small models, the integration of Foundry Local with Azure Local is specifically designed to support large-scale models utilizing the latest GPUs from partners such as NVIDIA. Microsoft will provide comprehensive support for deployments, updates and operational health. Even as inferencing demands increase over time, customers retain complete control over their data and hardware.  

Choice and control without added complexity 

Customers facing strict sovereignty and regulatory requirements are clear that a fully disconnected sovereign private cloud is a key business need. Microsoft Sovereign Private Cloud is designed to meet these needs head-on, enabling secure, compliant operations even in environments with no external connectivity. At the same time, we recognize that disconnected environments are not one-size-fits-all; some customers operate across connected, hybrid and disconnected modes based on mission, risk and regulation. Our approach helps customers to meet strict sovereign requirements in fully disconnected scenarios without compromising simplicity, while retaining flexibility where connectivity is possible. Together, Azure Local disconnected operations, Microsoft 365 Local and Foundry Local help organizations choose where workloads run and how environments are managed, while standardizing governance and operational practices across connected and disconnected deployments. 

Get started 

• Azure Local disconnected operations and Microsoft 365 Local disconnected are now available worldwide, and large models on Foundry Local are available to qualified customers. 

• Explore the Microsoft Sovereign Cloud  

• Learn more about Azure Local disconnected operations 

Douglas Phillips leads global engineering efforts for Microsoft’s specialized, sovereign, and private clouds. He is responsible for Microsoft’s global strategy, products and operations that bring Microsoft’s industry-leading solutions, including Azure, our adaptive cloud portfolio and Microsoft 365 collaboration suite, to customers with additional sovereignty, security, edge and compliance requirements. 

The post Microsoft Sovereign Cloud adds governance, productivity and support for large AI models securely running even when completely disconnected  appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

As digital sovereignty becomes a strategic requirement, organizations are rethinking how they deploy critical infrastructure and AI capabilities under tighter regulatory expectations and higher risk conditions. Microsoft’s approach to sovereignty is grounded in enabling enterprises, public sectors and regulated industries to participate in the digital economy securely, independently and on their own terms. The Microsoft Sovereign Cloud brings together productivity, security and cloud workloads to span both…
The post Microsoft Sovereign Cloud adds governance, productivity and support for large AI models securely running even when completely disconnected  appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More

In 2020, Microsoft announced a moonshot commitment to become carbon negative by 2030 — accelerating work across our company to advance the partnerships and technologies needed to advance sustainability for our businesses, our customers and the world. A key milestone on this journey was our aim to match 100% of our annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy(1) by 2025. Today, we are pleased to share that Microsoft has achieved this milestone(2). This progress helps drive investment into the power systems where we operate, expand clean energy supply and advance broader energy innovation.

Over a decade of investment: 40 gigawatts of new renewable energy contracted

What began in 2013 with a single 110 megawatt (MW) power purchase agreement (PPA) in Texas — a small first step to demonstrate how corporate procurement could scale clean energy(3) — has evolved into one of the largest clean energy portfolios in the world. This first deal not only supported Microsoft’s early cloud services but also set in motion a decade of commercial partnerships and learning-by-doing that served to demonstrate how corporate demand for advanced energy solutions can help to achieve a more affordable and sustainable power system, while supporting reliability for customers.

Since our carbon negative announcement in 2020, we have contracted 40 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy supply across 26 countries, working with more than 95 utilities and developers across 400+ contracts and counting. To put that amount in perspective — that’s enough energy to power about 10 million US homes. Of that contracted volume, 19 GW are now online, delivering new clean energy supply to the power grid, while the remainder are slated to come online over the next five years.

Our new renewable energy procurement continues to deliver significant environmental benefits, including the reduction of Microsoft’s reported Scope 2 carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 25 million tons(4) and the mobilization of billions of dollars’ worth of private investment in regions where we operate.

Catalyzing market investment through bankable, repeatable models

Microsoft is among the early pioneers in developing technical and commercial practices that help advance bankable, repeatable and scalable procurement tools suitable for each market. Our clean energy purchasing navigates a global patchwork of power market designs, requiring creativity in how we balance cost, time to market and project sizing in our portfolio across planning, contracting and management.

Our work has benefited from a broad coalition of partners helping to build this market together. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, more than 200 global corporations collectively purchased nearly 200 GW of clean energy around the world since 2008. Working alongside other clean energy buyers — as well as hundreds of utilities, manufacturers, financiers, developers and engineers — we have helped reduce transaction costs, expand developer access to financing and streamline procurement approaches that other buyers can adopt.

This global flywheel of partnership, investment, technology and policy innovation is expected to continue to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of investment into infrastructure and jobs. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, when Microsoft sends a clear market signal for world-class, first-of-a-kind technologies and infrastructure, the power sector rises to the challenge. Our procurement over the past decade has demonstrated that partnerships, communities and innovation are essential ingredients that help to accelerate first-of-a-kind technologies and infrastructure at scale.

Scaling partnerships to scale infrastructure

Critical to Microsoft’s success in expanding digital infrastructure and supporting our local communities is our ability to build trusted partnerships with the over 95 global energy suppliers that support our clean energy portfolio. We have sourced clean energy through multiple requests for proposal or information, bilateral engagements and clean tariffs to evaluate over 5,000 unique carbon-free energy projects around the world.

Today, Microsoft has six energy company partners with which we have over 1 GW of contracted renewable energy capacity, and more than 20 energy supplier partners where each partner has at least five separate renewable energy projects with Microsoft — evidence of the durable, repeatable relationships necessary to scale clean energy. Combining scale with speed, Microsoft’s landmark 10.5 GW framework agreement with Brookfield sends a long-term, 2030 demand signal to the market that enables developers to raise funding more efficiently, bolster supply chains, hire engineers and construct world-class energy infrastructure.

Putting communities first

Our renewable energy procurement has mobilized billions of dollars in private investment, supported thousands of jobs across the communities where we operate and delivered meaningful co-benefits. Through partnerships with developers and nonprofit organizations, we’ve worked to embed community-driven benefits into our energy portfolio. These benefits include robust infrastructure, economic inclusion and support for community-focused organizations.

Our support for communities shows up in projects like our 500 MW PPA with Sol Systems, or our 250 MW PPA with Volt Energy Utility that provided local training and jobs, as well as grants to community nonprofit organizations and habitat restoration. We’ve also signed over 1.5 GW of distributed solar, bringing clean energy directly into hundreds of communities around the world. Landmark agreements like our 500 MW offtake with Pivot Energy, or our 270 MW offtake with PowerTrust are expected to foster employment, energy cost savings and grid resilience in communities across the United States, Mexico and Brazil. More details on the above examples and our approach to community benefits in clean energy agreements can be found in a dedicated Microsoft whitepaper.

Innovation unlocks new markets and pathways

Microsoft’s clean energy procurement continues to play an important role in catalyzing technical, commercial and regulatory innovation. Our commercial efforts have helped lower barriers to entry into new markets and expand access into multi-technology contracts that accelerate decarbonization.

In Japan, Microsoft signed one of the first corporate PPAs in the country’s restructured power market. Our 25 MW, 20-year agreement with Shizen represents the first single-asset virtual PPA executed in the country, which helped pave the way to over 2GWs of corporate procurement since 2024, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Alongside opening new markets, we have structured several multi-technology offtakes in nascent markets for corporate procurement. In India, Microsoft purchased a combined 437 MW solar/wind hybrid offtake from Renew, where our projects will support energy access and rural electrification. In Microsoft’s home state of Washington, our datacenters in Douglas County are supplied by 100% carbon-free energy, as we leverage a creative blend of new wind power and hydropower storage to deliver around-the-clock clean energy.

Looking forward to 2030 and beyond

In 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) described a new “Age of Electricity,” marked by accelerating electricity demand from electric vehicles, air conditioners, data centers and heat pumps. As the world electrifies more of the economy, the demand for affordable, reliable and clean electricity will continue to rise.

Our experience building Microsoft’s clean energy portfolio both reflects and furthers global trends. According to IEA data, since 2000, renewable energy generation has expanded nearly four-fold. In many power markets across the world, clean energy is one of the fast-growing sources of generation, and often the one with the fastest time-to-market. Corporate buyers like Microsoft continue to serve as an important catalyst in driving commercial demand for innovation and infrastructure across the power industry.

As we continue our journey toward becoming carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft will continue to push for an expansive focus on adding all forms of carbon-free electricity solutions, complementing and adding to our portfolio of renewable energy resources. We recognize that the world’s rising electricity needs require a balanced, all-of-the-above decarbonization strategy to meet global economic growth and environmental goals, and our sustainability goals will continue to support this approach moving forward. Such a strategy requires a broader set of carbon-free energy and grid-enabling technologies, including nuclear energy, next-generation grid infrastructure and carbon capture technology. Just as renewable energy was a relatively small part of global energy grids in 2013 when we signed our first PPA, today many advanced energy technologies remain early in their development but offer significant promise to accelerate progress towards an affordable, reliable and sustainable energy future.

Microsoft has already taken early steps to support the advancement of a broader set of carbon-free energy technologies as we partner with Helion and Constellation Energy on a 50 MW fusion project in Washington state and work with Constellation to restart the 835 MW Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania. Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund has allocated $806 million of capital to 67 investees, with 38% directed toward Energy Systems — advancing carbon-free power and fuels, energy storage and energy management solutions.

We welcome continued collaboration with our power sector partners to bring these innovations to market and incorporate new technology tools in the process to accelerate their development.

We will continue to build and leverage new AI-driven tools to design, permit and deploy new power technologies that help expand and more efficiently operate the electricity grid, bringing more clean energy online faster. This work is exemplified by our recently announced collaborations with Idaho National Laboratory and the Midcontinental System Operator, among other examples.

And as we advance innovative energy technologies, we recognize that standards must evolve alongside innovation. That is why we will continue participating in industry forums that strengthen carbon accounting frameworks — so that our clean energy procurement is measured with greater accuracy and delivers real world emissions reductions, with a continued focus on maintaining the high level of integrity that the world has come to expect from Microsoft.

Our carbon negative commitment remains a call to action — for Microsoft, our customers and the broader technology sector — to invest in an affordable, reliable and sustainable power system. As we look toward 2030, that call to action has never been clearer.

Gratitude — and momentum for the work ahead

Today’s milestone represents a shared achievement among the utility professionals, clean energy developers, community leaders, technology innovators and forward-thinking policymakers who continue the deployment of renewable energy. Meeting today’s milestone shows what partnership can deliver in bringing big ideas to life. The future of carbon-free energy is one that we will create – together.

As Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Melanie Nakagawa leads the company’s targets to be carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste by 2030. She brings deep experience at the intersection of policy, business, and technology to advance climate and sustainability solutions globally.

As President of Cloud Operations + Innovation at Microsoft, Noelle Walsh leads the organization that powers the global Microsoft Cloud. She oversees the company’s physical cloud infrastructure and operations, with a charter focused on safety, security, availability, sustainability, and competitive infrastructure growth—bringing decades of global operational leadership.

Footnotes

1. Renewable energy is defined within Microsoft’s fact sheet https://aka.ms/SustainabilityFactsheet2025, which represents FY24 data.
2. To date, Microsoft’s renewable energy target includes two primary categories: renewable energy from contracted projects and grid mix. The first is renewable energy delivered under PPAs or similar long-term contracting mechanisms, generally for new projects where our financial involvement in the project’s development is critical for its success. This category represents more than 90% of the renewable energy applied to achieve our 2025 target.The second category is “grid mix” – renewable energy supported via our standard utility relationships and rates, inclusive of policy programs such as renewable portfolio standards and state and utility decarbonization goals.Our 2025 100% renewable target does not include purchases from short-term, so-called “spot market” renewable energy credits (RECs) sourced from operational clean energy projects.With the above in mind, Microsoft leverages a straightforward formula to determine our 100% renewable energy metric on a global, annual basis. We update and further detail the methodology and assumptions behind this formula in our annual sustainability reports:
3. Clean energy— also referred to in this blog as carbon free energy —is defined within Microsoft’s fact sheet https://aka.ms/SustainabilityFactsheet2025, which represents FY24 data.
4. Reduction of reported Scope 2 emissions are calculated between FY20-25, the cumulative difference between location based and market-based emissions, excluding the use of short-term, so-called “spot market” RECs

The post A milestone achievement in our journey to carbon negative appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

In 2020, Microsoft announced a moonshot commitment to become carbon negative by 2030 — accelerating work across our company to advance the partnerships and technologies needed to advance sustainability for our businesses, our customers and the world. A key milestone on this journey was our aim to match 100% of our annual global electricity consumption…
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At Microsoft Ignite in November, we introduced Frontier Transformation — a holistic reimagining of business aligning AI with human ambition to help organizations achieve their highest aspirations and growth potential. While AI Transformation centered on efficiency and productivity, Frontier Transformation challenges us to do more for humanity by democratizing intelligence to unlock creativity and innovation for organizations and people around the world.

Across industries, our customers are leading the way to becoming Frontier; sharing three common traits anchored in a foundation of Intelligence + Trust. AI in the flow of human ambition, putting Copilots and agents directly in the tools people use; and ubiquitous innovation, empowering the maker in every role. These capabilities are served through Microsoft’s new intelligence layer: Work IQ, which understands how people work; Fabric IQ, which provides a trusted semantic layer for reasoning over an organization’s data; and Foundry IQ, the world’s leading AI app server powering safe, scalable agent experiences. Together, these capabilities put the “I” back in AI by grounding Copilots and agents in an organization’s own data, logic and workflows to fully understand operations and drive decisions that matter most. The third trait is observability at every layer of the stack; ensuring trust, safety and reliable outcomes. As the control plane to observe, govern and secure all AI artifacts, Agent 365 provides a unified view of every AI agent running in an organization’s environment — whether built on Microsoft’s platforms or others.

Our customers and partners are showcasing what can be achieved with Frontier Transformation and human ambition paired with Copilots + agents, and I am pleased to share their stories — including many onstage with us at Ignite. Their journeys demonstrate what is possible for organizations everywhere when AI-first innovation is built upon Intelligence + Trust.

Putting AI in the flow of human ambition so people can achieve more in every role, across every industry

Using a secure Azure foundation, Epic embedded AI directly into clinical workflows, enabling hundreds of thousands of clinicians worldwide to work faster and deliver higher quality care. Epic AI generates documentation in the flow of work, reducing time spent on prior authorization questions by over 40% and surfacing critical insights that could be missed during manual review. In one month alone, Epic AI automatically generated more than 16 million patient record summaries, helping clinicians reduce administrative workload and speed time to treatment. AI-driven imaging follow-up also boosted early cancer detection at the Christ Hospital to 69%, far above the national 46% average. By delivering real improvements like these today, Epic is building confidence and familiarity that will accelerate adoption of tomorrow’s AI-enabled breakthroughs in precision medicine, drug discovery and the understanding of disease.

To create a consistent experience across its entire workforce, heritage brand Levi Strauss & Co. standardized on Windows 11, Copilot+ PCs, Intune, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Foundry to give every team — from designers to retail associates to distribution centers — a modern, AI-powered workplace. With Copilot and agents accelerating workflows and eliminating fragmentation across legacy systems, teams can model demand faster, bring products to market with greater precision and spend more time on creative and commercial work that strengthens the brand. They are also reducing operational noise, strengthening security and scaling insights across design, merchandising, retail and supply chain. With a unified, secure Microsoft platform, Levi’s is enriching the employee experience, driving sharper execution and building durable advantage in an increasingly dynamic market.

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is unifying the data foundation of global finance by modernizing its platform on Microsoft Fabric and bringing trusted financial intelligence directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot. The company has consolidated 30 legacy data systems, 1,200 datasets and more than 33 petabytes of financial content into a single, governed environment. This unified foundation is now delivering faster, cleaner insights to 44,000 customers in over 170 countries and cutting product development timelines from years to months. With Fabric and Copilot working together, financial professionals can access LSEG’s expansive data and analytics directly in the flow of work — helping them make decisions with greater speed and confidence while reducing friction across risk modeling, regulatory compliance and investment workflows. By simplifying the data estate first, LSEG is safely surfacing insights through Microsoft 365 Copilot and empowering teams across the organization to innovate with consistency, compliance and at global scale.

The University of Manchester is the first higher education institution in the world to provide Microsoft 365 Copilot access and training to all 65,000 students and staff. Learners and researchers will gain equitable access to Copilot-powered tools to strengthen teaching, accelerate interdisciplinary discovery and build future-ready skills. For students, this is an essential aid for revision, translation and academic success; while university leadership can ensure responsible use policies and training so every student can use AI ethically and confidently. Researchers can synthesize vast volumes of information across fields from photonic materials to biomedical science, enabling faster progress on challenges from cancer treatment to sustainable manufacturing; while operationally, Copilot helps administrative staff free their time for higher value work. The University of Manchester is defining a new model for modern higher education by pairing its decades of AI innovation with equitable access to cutting edge AI tools that prepare the next generation of citizens, innovators and creators.

Inspiring the maker in every one of us with ubiquitous innovation that amplifies creativity and accelerates impact

Adobe is redefining creativity, productivity and customer experience by infusing AI deeply into its product ecosystem, powered by Azure, Copilot and Microsoft Foundry. By supporting third-party models directly inside Adobe Firefly, creators can choose the best model for the job while unlocking new agentic capabilities across Photoshop, Acrobat and Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration solutions; resulting in significant acceleration in workflows through AI-driven agents. With daily use of GitHub Copilot, its engineering organization is boosting developer productivity and speed to innovation. The company is also focused on enterprise-grade governance and data provenance to help customers trust and verify content as AI adoption grows — further reinforced by Adobe Marketing Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of the Agent 365 preview. By combining open model choice with responsible AI infrastructure, Adobe is giving customers creative choice and operational confidence, while unlocking faster innovation, without compromising security, trust or brand integrity.

In an industry facing unprecedented pressure — from rising costs to shrinking margins — Land O’Lakes is accelerating AI innovation across American agriculture by developing a new digital assistant called Oz. Built on models within Microsoft Foundry, the digital assistant turns an 800-page crop protection guide into instant, data-rich insights delivered through intuitive workflows. The Copilot solution provides agronomic expertise throughout the growing season tailored to each grower’s soil, crop and environmental conditions — with personalized recommendations that address unique farm-level challenges. This AI-enhanced solution streamlines access to critical information so experts can help growers make faster, more confident decisions that help control input costs, boost crop yields and drive long-term success. The work Land O’Lakes is doing shows how AI can democratize intelligence — empowering farmers to grow their businesses while feeding their communities and building a more resilient agricultural ecosystem.

Mercedes Benz is transforming every layer of its enterprise — from headquarters to the factory floor to the driving experience. Built on Azure and powered by Copilot, the company is moving toward making Copilot available broadly, with over 50 business areas already using Copilot Studio to build and automate their own workflows and agents. GitHub Copilot has driven a 70% increase in engagement with software developers, shifting teams from routine coding to higher value innovation. On the factory floor, Mercedes’ MO360 data platform connects 30 passenger plants, and its Digital Factory Chat multiagent system is cutting issue diagnosis time from days to minutes. With the next generation of Hey Mercedes — powered by Azure OpenAI, Bing, Microsoft Teams, Intune and Microsoft 365 Copilot — the vehicle becomes a “third workspace,” enabling productivity through natural voice. Investing in AI skills, tools and platform breadth is helping Mercedes Benz build enterprise capability and bend the curve on innovation; with efficiency gains that help teams innovate and drive operational impact internally and across customer experiences. We also recently announced our partnership with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team to drive innovation across its racing operations. With Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise AI stack — including Azure AI, Microsoft 365 and GitHub — it is turning data into real-time intelligence that powers faster decisions, smarter strategies and sustained competitive advantage on and off the track.

Pantone is transforming decades of color expertise into a next-generation AI offering with the launch of its Pantone Palette Generator, built entirely on Microsoft Foundry and Azure AI. By applying a multi-agent architecture powered by Azure AI Search, Azure Cosmos DB and Azure OpenAI, Pantone is bringing instant, trend-backed color guidance directly into creative workflows. What once required weeks of research across physical color books and expert archives can now be achieved in seconds, enabling designers, brands and product teams to move from inspiration to production with greater speed and accuracy. Using GitHub Copilot, its engineering team accelerated development of initial proof of concept by more than 200 hours, allowing the company to focus on enhancing agent orchestration and color science logic. As Pantone expands its AI-native platform, it is also helping creators build new skills — learning how to integrate agentic workflows, prompt engineering and trend-driven insights into the design process. The platform modernizes Pantone’s iconic color system and positions the company to scale new digital services as it evolves its multiagent capabilities and reshapes business processes.

Westpac is bringing Copilot to more than 35,000 employees across its global workforce — the largest Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout to date in Australia and the largest deployment in financial services within Asia Pacific. This comes after a successful pilot with 15,000 employees that delivered strong business outcomes and freed up significant time for users each month. The company is now deploying AI to accelerate work, reduce friction and reinvent how employees engage with their customers. The bank is pairing its Copilot implementation with AI education programs and Microsoft Copilot Studio to build custom agents for HR and IT, while creating a new Azure-based innovation sandbox to enable teams to quickly experiment with AI-enabled workflows and solutions. Westpac’s move to embed AI at scale is a strategic investment in people and a catalyst for more efficient, higher value work—underscoring how responsible, enterprise grade AI can drive meaningful value for employees, customers and shareholders.

Bringing observability to every layer of the stack to ensure outcomes are reliable, safe and aligned with the business

ServiceNow is helping its customers accelerate AI adoption safely by integrating with Microsoft Agent 365 — Microsoft’s control plane for securing and governing agents at scale. By enabling them to bring their agentic workflows into a unified governance environment, ServiceNow can help them gain visibility, access controls and ensure compliance across AI systems. Companies like AstraZeneca are already using ServiceNow AI Control Tower together with Agent 365 to manage lab and operational workflows, saving 90,000 hours that researchers can redirect toward discovering lifesaving drugs. The ability to see, trust and scale AI agents gives organizations confidence to move quickly without losing control. ServiceNow is demonstrating how advanced workflow AI delivers its greatest value when paired with enterprise-wide governance — giving organizations the speed and efficiency they want while maintaining the control required for mission critical operations.

To help organizations safely accelerate agentic AI adoption, Workday is building solutions that work with Agent 365 for a unified way to govern its agents. The company is helping businesses address the shift from shadow IT to shadow AI as employees begin incorporating AI agents into the way they work. Workday’s Agent System of Record helps customers establish governance and oversight around the work AI agents are doing, allowing them to scale intelligent workflows with confidence. Workday highlights that responsible AI acceleration requires combining powerful automation with a shared control plan — making the secure, compliant path the easiest one, and enabling organizations to scale without losing oversight.

As organizations move to operationalize agentic AI at scale, Genspark is integrating with Agent 365 to provide a governed, enterprise grade path for deploying its rapidly growing ecosystem of Super Agents. As employees increasingly experiment with personal AI creation tools, companies are looking for ways to shift from unmanaged shadow AI to secure, outcome-driven agent workflows. Through Agent 365, the platform enables organizations to register its agents alongside those from Microsoft and other partners, apply unified governance policies, maintain consistent identity and permission controls, and ensure all agent generated outputs align with corporate, regulatory and data residency requirements. This governance layer extends the value of its own agent registry — where more than 80 specialized agents and millions of user generated prompts are already driving productivity — allowing customers to safely scale agentic creation across roles, teams and industries. Genspark demonstrates that responsible acceleration requires pairing powerful, outcome first agent experiences with a shared control plane like Agent 365, enabling AI to scale without losing oversight.

At Ignite, we also introduced Agent Factory — a new way for organizations to build and scale AI agents with confidence — bringing together Work IQ, Fabric IQ and Foundry IQ under a single, ROI-driven model. Agent Factory enables companies to take complex workflows — from claims processing to freight forwarding to supply chain management — and turn them into measurable, production-ready agentic systems supported by Microsoft’s forward deployed engineers, partner ecosystem and built-in governance. As agents move from experimentation to mission critical automation, companies need a standardized, governed path to build and scale them, and Agent Factory is the solution — tying innovation directly to measurable ROI.

Our ambition with Frontier Transformation is to ensure that the maker in every one of us is empowered by everything we build and deliver. As we enter the second half of the fiscal year, one thing is clear: our customers and partners are redefining what can be achieved as Frontier Firms. Built on a foundation of Intelligence + Trust, and with the full breadth of Microsoft’s cloud and AI solutions, we are committed to helping every organization scale AI-first innovation. Our model diverse, open and heterogenous platform unifies your IQ assets — and the human ambition that lives inside of your company — to deliver outcomes that help you achieve your highest aspirations. Thank you for your continued partnership and trust as we continue shaping what is possible together.

The post How Microsoft is empowering Frontier Transformation with Intelligence + Trust appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

At Microsoft Ignite in November, we introduced Frontier Transformation — a holistic reimagining of business aligning AI with human ambition to help organizations achieve their highest aspirations and growth potential. While AI Transformation centered on efficiency and productivity, Frontier Transformation challenges us to do more for humanity by democratizing intelligence to unlock creativity and innovation for…
The post How Microsoft is empowering Frontier Transformation with Intelligence + Trust appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More

The work we do, and the way we do it, is always changing. Each of us has a memory of how we once did a task regularly, the tools we used and how both the task and the tools have since changed so much they are nearly unrecognizable. Because we are living and working in the “now,” change feels both personal and fast, so it is always worth remembering that this has happened before, maybe not in just this way or with this speed.

And it is true. AI is rewriting work. How we do our jobs. How roles change. How careers are built. The skills we need. Some of that is exciting. Some of it can feel overwhelming. What we remember and have learned from previous times is that in moments like this, people are open to work and don’t just need new tools. They need a new mindset, a clearer understanding of what’s changing and a path forward.

That’s why today we’re announcing Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, LinkedIn’s first book, by CEO Ryan Roslansky and Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman. The book explores how AI is reshaping work and what that shift means for the people navigating it every day.

Microsoft and LinkedIn sit at the intersection of how work is done and how careers are built. We share a belief that the future of work will be driven by human creativity and ingenuity, not technology alone. When humans stay at the center, AI amplifies what people do best and creates new economic opportunity. Open to Work is grounded in that belief and focused on what’s happening now, not abstract predictions about the future.

Ryan’s leadership at LinkedIn and as head of engineering for Microsoft 365 Copilot gives him a rare perspective on this moment. He sees how AI is built, how it shows up in everyday work and what it takes to adapt. Aneesh’s role gives him unique insight into how together we can use this moment of change to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

The book is backed by real data — insights from experts, LinkedIn’s global network, Microsoft customers and the Work Trend Index. The goal isn’t hype. It’s clarity about how work is changing and how people can respond in practical, meaningful ways.

For professionals, Open to Work is about agency — what you delegate to AI, what skills to deepen and how you stay relevant as roles evolve. For leaders, it’s about rethinking how work gets organized and cultivating a Frontier mindset: the conviction that the most important innovations happen at the edges, where uncertainty is highest and the opportunity to shape what comes next is greatest. And for Microsoft and LinkedIn employees, it’s a reminder of the responsibility we share to shape the future of work in a thoughtful, human-centered way.

Open to Work publishes March 31 and is available for pre-order today.

Frank X. Shaw is responsible for defining and managing communications strategies worldwide, company-wide storytelling, product PR, media and analyst relations, executive communications, employee communications, global agency management and military affairs.

Top image: Aneesh Raman, left, LinkedIn chief economic opportunity officer, and Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO. Photo provided by LinkedIn.

The post Announcing Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

The work we do, and the way we do it, is always changing. Each of us has a memory of how we once did a task regularly, the tools we used and how both the task and the tools have since changed so much they are nearly unrecognizable. Because we are living and working in…
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By now, most people would agree that AI is in the process of fundamentally changing how we work and solve problems. But this technology is still too often thought of as an addition to the work we do, rather than a fundamental part of it.

AI is not something that you can just plop on the end of a finished product, like a cherry on top of a sundae. Instead, using AI responsibly and wisely means thinking through how it can be used most effectively at every layer, from the datacenter that powers AI functionality to the people and organizations that are benefiting from its capabilities.

As we embark on another Microsoft Ignite, our company is empowering the complete lifecycle of AI, creating tools and solutions to drive the next generation of digital transformation for every organization and at every level of the work they do.

We envision a future where organizations become Frontier Firms by using AI for unlocking creativity and innovation, allowing the next great ideas to surface.

These are some of the major themes we are seeing with this year’s Ignite products and features:

AI in the flow of human ambition

At Microsoft, we believe that all great ideas start with human ambition, which can be accessed and unlocked using the capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot and an agent ecosystem.

Work IQ amplifies your IQ. It’s the intelligence layer that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to know how you work, with whom you work and the content you collaborate on. Built on your data, memory and inference, it connects to the rich company knowledge in your emails, files, meetings and chats, plus your preferences, habits, work patterns and relationships. It allows Copilot to make connections, unlock insights and predict the next best action based on native integrations, not a patchwork of third-party connectors. And now, you can tap into the expertise of Work IQ with APIs to build agents tuned to your unique workflows and business needs.

Work IQ also is powering many of the updates across Microsoft 365 Copilot announced at Ignite today.

Ubiquitous innovation and intelligence

In a Frontier Firm, there are makers in every room of the house. People on the frontlines are closest to the work problems that need to be solved. They can create agents to help them in their day-to-day work.

How do AI agents know what to do with your data? Foundry IQ and Fabric IQ help AI agents understand what users are doing, bridge the gap between raw data and real-world business meaning and find the context to make decisions.

Fabric IQ brings together analytical, time series and location-based data with your operational systems under one shared model tied to business meaning. This gives you a live, connected view of your business, so both people and AI can act in real time. If you are a customer who is already using Power BI for your business intelligence reporting, all of that pre-existing data modeling work will act as an immediate accelerant, giving your agents the unique context that defines how your business runs.

Foundry IQ takes this further with a fully managed knowledge system designed to ground AI agents over multiple data sources — including Microsoft 365 (Work IQ), Fabric IQ, custom applications and the web. This single endpoint for knowledge has routing and intelligence built in, enabling higher-quality reasoning, safer actions and more value for builders.

Microsoft Agent Factory is a program that brings these agent IQ layers together to help organizations build agents with confidence. With a single metered plan, customers can start building with IQ using Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio. They can deploy their agents anywhere, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, with no upfront licensing and provisioning required. Eligible organizations can also tap into hands-on support from top AI Forward Deployed Engineers and access tailored role-based training to boost AI fluency across teams.

Observability at every layer

By 2028, businesses are projected to have^[1] 1.3 billion AI agents automating workflows. Most organizations don’t yet have a way to observe, secure or govern them — if not governed, AI agents are the new shadow IT.

Microsoft Agent 365 enables you to observe, manage and secure your AI agents, whether the agents are created with Microsoft platforms, open-source frameworks or third-party platforms.

It equips them with many of the same apps and protections as people, tailored to agent needs, saving IT time and effort on integrating agents into business processes. It includes the Microsoft security solutions Defender, Entra, Purview and Foundry Control Plane to protect and govern agents, productivity tools including Microsoft 365 apps and Work IQ to help people work more efficiently and Microsoft 365 admin center to manage agents.

This is only a small selection of the many exciting features and updates we will be announcing at Ignite. As a reminder, you can view keynote sessions from Microsoft executives, including Judson Althoff, Scott Guthrie, Charles Lamanna, Asha Sharma and Ryan Roslansky, live or on-demand.

Plus, you can get more on all these announcements by exploring the Book of News, the official compendium of all today’s news.

Frank X. Shaw is responsible for defining and managing communications strategies worldwide, company-wide storytelling, product PR, media and analyst relations, executive communications, employee communications, global agency management and military affairs.

Related:

Partners leading the AI transformation: Microsoft Ignite 2025 recap

[1] IDC Info Snapshot, sponsored by Microsoft, 1.3 Billion AI Agents by 2028, May 2025 #US53361825

The post From idea to deployment: The complete lifecycle of AI on display at Ignite 2025 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

By now, most people would agree that AI is in the process of fundamentally changing how we work and solve problems. But this technology is still too often thought of as an addition to the work we do, rather than a fundamental part of it. AI is not something that you can just plop on…
The post From idea to deployment: The complete lifecycle of AI on display at Ignite 2025 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More

Today, we are unveiling the next Fairwater site of Azure AI datacenters in Atlanta, Georgia. This purpose-built datacenter is connected to our first Fairwater site in Wisconsin, prior generations of AI supercomputers and the broader Azure global datacenter footprint to create the world’s first planet-scale AI superfactory. By packing computing power more densely than ever before, each Fairwater site is built to efficiently meet unprecedented demand for AI compute, push the frontiers of model intelligence and empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.

To meet this demand, we have reinvented how we design AI datacenters and the systems we run inside of them. Fairwater is a departure from the traditional cloud datacenter model and uses a single flat network that can integrate hundreds of thousands of the latest NVIDIA GB200 and GB300 GPUs into a massive supercomputer. These innovations are a product of decades of experience designing datacenters and networks, as well as learnings from supporting some of the largest AI training jobs on the planet.

While the Fairwater datacenter design is well suited for training the next generation of frontier models, it is also built with fungibility in mind. Training has evolved from a single monolithic job into a range of workloads with different requirements (such as pre-training, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning and synthetic data generation). Microsoft has deployed a dedicated AI WAN backbone to integrate each Fairwater site into a broader elastic system that enables dynamic allocation of diverse AI workloads and maximizes GPU utilization of the combined system.

Below, we walk through some of the exciting technical innovations that support Fairwater, from the way we build datacenters to the networking within and across the sites.

Maximum density of compute

Modern AI infrastructure is increasingly constrained by the laws of physics. The speed of light is now a key bottleneck in our ability to tightly integrate accelerators, compute and storage with performant latency. Fairwater is designed to maximize the density of compute to minimize latency within and across racks and maximize system performance.

One of the key levers for driving density is improving cooling at scale. AI servers in the Fairwater datacenters are connected to a facility-wide cooling system designed for longevity, with a closed-loop approach that reuses the liquid continuously after the initial fill with no evaporation. The water used in the initial fill is equivalent to what 20 homes consume in a year and is only replaced if water chemistry indicates it is needed (it is designed for 6-plus years), making it extremely efficient and sustainable.

Liquid-based cooling also provides much higher heat transfer, enabling us to maximize rack and row-level power (~140kW per rack, 1,360 kW per row) to pack compute as densely as possible inside the datacenter. State-of-the-art cooling also helps us maximize utilization of this dense compute in steady-state operations, enabling large training jobs to run performantly at high scale. After cycling through a system of cold plate paths across the GPU fleet, heat is dissipated by one of the largest chiller plants on the planet.

Another way we are driving compute density is with a two-story datacenter building design. Many AI workloads are very sensitive to latency, which means cable run lengths can meaningfully impact cluster performance. Every GPU in Fairwater is connected to every other GPU, so the two-story datacenter building approach allows for placement of racks in three dimensions to minimize cable lengths, which in turn improves latency, bandwidth, reliability and cost.

High-availability, low-cost power

We are pushing the envelope in serving this compute with cost-efficient, reliable power. The Atlanta site was selected with resilient utility power in mind and is capable of achieving 4×9 availability at 3×9 cost. By securing highly available grid power, we can also forgo traditional resiliency approaches for the GPU fleet (such as on-site generation, UPS systems and dual-corded distribution), driving cost savings for customers and faster time-to-market for Microsoft.

We have also worked with our industry partners to codevelop power-management solutions to mitigate power oscillations created by large scale jobs, a growing challenge in maintaining grid stability as AI demand scales. This includes a software-driven solution that introduces supplementary workloads during periods of reduced activity, a hardware-driven solution where the GPUs enforce their own power thresholds and an on-site energy storage solution to further mask power fluctuations without utilizing excess power.

Cutting-edge accelerators and networking systems

Fairwater’s world-class datacenter design is powered by purpose-built servers, cutting-edge AI accelerators and novel networking systems. Each Fairwater datacenter runs a single, coherent cluster of interconnected NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, with an advanced network architecture that can scale reliably beyond traditional Clos network limits with current-gen switches (hundreds of thousands of GPUs on a single flat network). This required innovation across scale-up networking, scale-out networking and networking protocol.

In terms of scale-up, each rack of AI accelerators houses up to 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, connected via NVLink for ultra-low-latency communication within the rack. Blackwell accelerators provide the highest compute density available today, with support for low-precision number formats like FP4 to increase total FLOPS and enable efficient memory use. Each rack provides 1.8 TB of GPU-to-GPU bandwidth, with over 14 TB of pooled memory available to each GPU.

These racks then use scale-out networking to create pods and clusters that enable all GPUs to function as a single supercomputer with minimal hop counts. We achieve this with a two-tier, ethernet-based backend network that supports massive cluster sizes with 800 Gbps GPU-to-GPU connectivity. Relying on a broad ethernet ecosystem and SONiC (Software for Open Network in the Cloud – which is our own operating system for our network switches) also helps us avoid vendor lock-in and manage cost, as we can use commodity hardware instead of proprietary solutions.

Improvements across packet trimming, packet spray and high-frequency telemetry are core components of our optimized AI network. We are also working to enable deeper control and optimization of network routes. Together, these technologies deliver advanced congestion control, rapid detection and retransmission and agile load balancing, ensuring ultra-reliable, low-latency performance for modern AI workloads.

Planet scale

Even with these innovations, compute demands for large training jobs (now measured in trillions of parameters) are quickly outpacing the power and space constraints of a single facility. To serve these needs, we have built a dedicated AI WAN optical network to extend Fairwater’s scale-up and scale-out networks. Leveraging our scale and decades of hyperscale expertise, we delivered over 120,000 new fiber miles across the US last year — expanding AI network reach and reliability nationwide.

With this high-performance, high-resiliency backbone, we can directly connect different generations of supercomputers into an AI superfactory that exceeds the capabilities of a single site across geographically diverse locations. This empowers AI developers to tap our broader network of Azure AI datacenters, segmenting traffic based on their needs across scale-up and scale-out networks within a site, as well as across sites via the continent spanning AI WAN.

This is a meaningful departure from the past, where all traffic had to ride the scale-out network regardless of the requirements of the workload. Not only does it provide customers with fit-for-purpose networking at a more granular level, it also helps create fungibility to maximize the flexibility and utilization of our infrastructure.

Putting it all together

The new Fairwater site in Atlanta represents the next leap in the Azure AI infrastructure and reflects our experience running the largest AI training jobs on the planet. It combines breakthrough innovations in compute density, sustainability and networking systems to efficiently serve the massive demand for computational power we are seeing. It also integrates deeply with other AI datacenters and the broader Azure platform to form the world’s first AI superfactory. Together, these innovations provide a flexible, fit-for-purpose infrastructure that can serve the full spectrum of modern AI workloads and empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. For our customers, this means easier integration of AI into every workflow and the ability to create innovative AI solutions that were previously unattainable.

Find out more about how Microsoft Azure can help you integrate AI to streamline and strengthen development lifecycles here.

Scott Guthrie is responsible for hyperscale cloud computing solutions and services including Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, generative AI solutions, data platforms and information and cybersecurity. These platforms and services help organizations worldwide solve urgent challenges and drive long-term transformation. 

The post Infinite scale: The architecture behind the Azure AI superfactory appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Today, we are unveiling the next Fairwater site of Azure AI datacenters in Atlanta, Georgia. This purpose-built datacenter is connected to our first Fairwater site in Wisconsin, prior generations of AI supercomputers and the broader Azure global datacenter footprint to create the world’s first planet-scale AI superfactory. By packing computing power more densely than ever…
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AI is rapidly becoming the backbone of our world, promising unprecedented productivity and innovation. But as organizations deploy AI agents to unlock new opportunities and drive growth, they also face a new breed of cybersecurity threats.

There are a lot of Star Trek fans here at Microsoft, including me. One of our engineering leaders gifted me a life-size cardboard standee of Data that lurks next to my office door. So, as I look at that cutout, I think about the Great AI Security Dilemma: Is AI going to be our best friend or our worst nightmare? Drawing inspiration from the duality of the android officer Data, and his evil twin Lore in the Star Trek universe, today’s AI agents can either fortify your cybersecurity defenses — or, if mismanaged — fracture them.

The influx of agents is real. IDC research[1] predicts there will be 1.3 billion agents in circulation by 2028. When we think about our agentic future in AI, the duality of Data and Lore seems like a great way to think about what we’ll face with AI agents and how to avoid double agents that upend control and trust. Leaders should consider three principles and tailor them to fit the specific needs of their organizations.

1. Recognize the new attack landscape

Security is not just an IT issue — it’s a board-level priority. Unlike traditional software, AI agents are even more dynamic, adaptive and likely to operate autonomously. This creates unique risks.

We must accept that AI can be abused in ways beyond what we’ve experienced with traditional software. We employ AI agents to perform well-meaning tasks, but those with broad privileges can be manipulated by bad actors to misuse their access, such as leaking sensitive data via automated actions. We call this the “Confused Deputy” problem. AI Agents “think” in terms of natural language where instructions and data are tightly intertwined, much more than in typical software we interact with. The generative models agents depend on dynamically analyze the entire soup of human (or even non-human) languages, making it hard to distinguish well-known safe operations from new instructions introduced through malicious manipulation. The risk grows even more when shadow agents — unapproved or orphaned — enter the picture. And as we saw in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and other tech waves, anything you cannot inventory and account for magnifies blind spots and drives risk ever upward.

2. Practice Agentic Zero Trust

AI agents may be new as productivity drivers, but they can still be managed effectively using established security principles. I’ve had great conversations about this here at Microsoft with leaders like Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of DeepMind and now Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft AI. Mustafa frequently shares a way to think about this, which he outlined in his book The Coming Wave, in terms of Containment and Alignment.

Containment simply means we do not blindly trust our AI Agents, and we significantly box every aspect of what they do. For example, we cannot let any agent’s access privileges exceed its role and purpose — it’s the same security approach we take to employee accounts, software and devices, what we refer to as “least privilege.” Similarly, we contain by never implicitly trusting what an agent does or how it communicates — everything must be monitored — and when this isn’t possible, agents simply are not permitted to operate in our environment.

Alignment is all about infusing positive control of an AI agent’s intended purpose, through its prompts and the models it uses. We must only use AI agents trained to resist attempts at corruption, with standard and mission-specific safety protections built into both the model itself and the prompts used to invoke the model. AI agents must resist attempts to divert them from their approved uses. They must execute in a Containment environment that watches closely for deviation from their intended purpose. All this requires strong AI agent identity and clear accountable ownership within the organization. As part of AI governance, every agent must have an identity, and we must know who in the organization is accountable for its aligned behavior.

Containment (least privilege) and Alignment will sound familiar to enterprise security teams, because they align with some of the basic principles of Zero Trust. Agentic Zero Trust includes “assuming breach,” or never implicitly trusting anything, making humans, devices and agents verify who they are explicitly before they gain access and limiting their access to only what’s needed to perform a task. While Agentic Zero Trust ultimately includes deeper security capabilities, discussing Containment and Alignment is a good shorthand in security-in-AI strategy conversations with senior stakeholders to keep everyone grounded in managing the new risk. Agents will keep joining and adapting at work — some may become double agents. With proper controls, we can protect ourselves.

3. Foster a culture of secure innovation

Technology alone won’t solve AI security. Culture is the real superpower in managing cyber risk — and leaders have the unique ability to shape it. Start with open dialogue: make AI risks and responsible use part of everyday conversations. Keep it cross-functional: legal, compliance, HR and others should have a seat at the table. Invest in continuous education: train teams on AI security fundamentals and clarify policies to cut through noise. Finally, embrace safe experimentation: give people approved spaces to learn and innovate without creating risk.

Organizations that thrive will treat AI as a teammate, not a threat — building trust through communication, learning and continuous improvement.

The path forward: What every company should do

AI isn’t just another chapter — it’s a plot twist that changes everything. The opportunities are huge, but so are the risks. The rise of AI requires ambient security, which executives create by making cybersecurity a daily priority. This means blending robust technical measures with ongoing education and clear leadership so that security awareness influences every choice made. Organizations maintain ambient security when they:

• Make AI security a strategic priority.
• Insist on Containment and Alignment for every agent.
• Mandate identity, ownership and data governance.
• Build a culture that champions secure innovation.

And it will be important to take a set of practical steps:

• Assign every AI agent an ID and owner — just like employees need badges. This ensures traceability and control.
• Document each agent’s intent and scope.
• Monitor actions, inputs and outputs. Map data flows early to set compliance benchmarks.
• Keep agents in secure, sanctioned environments — no rogue “agent factories.”

The call to action for every business is: Review your AI governance framework now. Demand clarity, accountability and continuous improvement. The future of cybersecurity is human plus machine — lead with purpose and make AI your strongest ally.

At Microsoft, we know we have a huge role to play in empowering our customers in this new era. In May, we introduced Microsoft Entra Agent ID as a way to help customers place unique identities to agents from the moment they are created in Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry. We leverage AI in Defender and Security Copilot, combined with the massive security signals we collect, to expose and defeat phishing campaigns and other attacks that cybercriminals may use as entry points to compromise AI agents. We’ve also been committed to a platform approach with AI agents, to help customers safely use both Microsoft and third-party agents on their journey, avoiding complexity and risk that come from needing to juggle excessive dashboards and management consoles.

I’m excited by several other innovations we will be sharing at Microsoft Ignite later this month, alongside customers and partners.

We may not be conversing with Data on the bridge of the USS Enterprise quite yet, but as a technologist, it’s never been more exciting than watching this stage of AI’s trajectory in our workplaces and lives. As leaders, understanding the core opportunities and risks helps create a safer world for humans and agents working together.

Notes

[1] IDC Info Snapshot, sponsored by Microsoft, 1.3 Billion AI Agents by 2028, May 2025 #US53361825

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AI is rapidly becoming the backbone of our world, promising unprecedented productivity and innovation. But as organizations deploy AI agents to unlock new opportunities and drive growth, they also face a new breed of cybersecurity threats. There are a lot of Star Trek fans here at Microsoft, including me. One of our engineering leaders gifted…
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