Microsoft unveils in-house AI models and agent-first devices at Build 2026

Microsoft Unveils AI Models, Scout Agent, and Wearable Device at Build 2026

Microsoft used its annual Build developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday to lay out a sweeping vision for AI-driven work, introducing seven proprietary AI models, a proactive personal agent called Scout, and a new hardware platform for wearable AI devices — all while OpenAI staged its own enterprise AI event on the same day.

New Models and an Always-On Agent

CEO Satya Nadella opened the two-day conference at Fort Mason Center with a keynote centered on what the company calls “agent-first” computing. At the core of the announcements was MAI-Thinking-1, Microsoft’s first in-house reasoning model, a mid-sized system with 35 billion active parameters and a 128,000-token context window. The model scored 97.0% on AIME 2025, 94.5% on AIME 2026, and 52.8% on SWE-Bench Pro, according to a Microsoft research paper published alongside the launch.microsoft

Six additional MAI models round out the family, spanning image generation, transcription, voice, and coding. MAI-Code-1 is already available inside Copilot and VS Code, while the others are rolling out through Microsoft Foundry.mashable

Microsoft also debuted Scout, which it categorizes as a new type of “Autopilot” — an always-on agent that works autonomously across Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and Outlook, handling meeting preparation, scheduling, and surfacing emails that need decisions, without waiting for a user prompt. Scout began its rollout to Frontier customers on Tuesday.thurrott

Agent-First Hardware

Perhaps the most eye-catching reveal was Project Solara, a chip-to-cloud platform built for devices that run AI agents instead of traditional apps. Microsoft showed two concept reference designs: a wearable badge with a camera and fingerprint sensor, and a desk companion resembling a smart display that unlocks via facial recognition. The platform runs on a lightweight operating system built atop the Android Open Source Project, managed through Microsoft’s Intune and Entra ID security tools.thenextweb

Hundreds of Microsoft employees are already testing the concept devices internally, and private pilots are underway with AccuWeather, Best Buy, CVS Health, Levi’s, and Target, according to The Next Web.thenextweb

A Shared Stage with OpenAI

The timing was hard to miss. On the same Tuesday, OpenAI held its “Intelligence at Work” livestream from New York, announcing plans to merge its Codex coding agent into the ChatGPT app and releasing six new business-focused Codex plugins covering sales, analytics, creative production, and investing. The Information noted that the two companies — still partners but increasingly rivals — are converging on similar visions of always-on AI assistants while expanding into each other’s territory.theinformation

Reuters reported that Microsoft is competing with multiple rivals to sell cloud-based AI tools for coding and enterprise tasks, while simultaneously pushing customers toward a future where AI agents replace conventional applications entirely.reuters