Microsoft Build

Microsoft’s commitment to AI is not news. Copilot has been everywhere for... a while now. But at this week’s Build developer conference, the company made clear that it wants — and needs — to be a bigger player in the space. The Verge’s Tom Warren joins David to talk about the new Scout AI assistant, the Solara operating system concept, and whether Microsoft can hang with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Also: how’s the new era of Xbox going?

Microsoft’s new publication has a familiar name and is aimed at developers, kicking off with information about the launch of Project Solara, its agentic AI hardware-focused platform.

At its Build developer conference, Microsoft is launching Microsoft Execution Containers, a policy-driven layer to make it more secure to run things like OpenClaw on Windows. It’s going a step further too, by allowing a companion app for OpenClaw to run contained on Windows PCs. It should stop AI agents like OpenClaw from deleting all your files. “You can totally run OpenClaw inside your company now,” says OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger.

Microsoft just introduced a couple of concept gadgets at Build 2026 that are powered by a new platform, Project Solara, which is made to run AI agents on devices taking the form of everything from smart speakers to security badges or earbuds.

Microsoft just launched a new Surface Dev Box, and the company is already using the machine live on stage at Build. The top looks like the vent on an Xbox Series X, and inside there’s an Nvidia RTX Spark chip and 128GB of unified memory. Overall, I’d say it looks like a flattened Xbox Series X.

It’s nearly time for Microsoft’s annual developer event. The Build keynote kicks off at 9:30AM PT / 12:30PM ET / 5:30PM UK. I’m expecting we’ll hear a lot about new Microsoft AI models, Windows dev improvements, and a little surprise or two.

The big focuses of Microsoft’s Build 2025 keynote were AI agents, the open agentic web, and Copilot upgrades that aim to solve coding bugs in a pinch. Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry is also expanding its model list to include Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini from Elon Musk’s xAI. Check out our video for more.

Instead of copying and pasting the text you want to translate, a new feature coming to Edge will let you convert a PDF into over 70 languages by simply clicking the “translate” button in the browser’s address bar. The feature is rolling out to Canary users now, but will be generally available next month.