Microsoft shows off new Windows software, revamped for agentic AI
Fortune Sebastian Herrera ● Covered by 7 sources
Microsoft just rebuilt Windows around AI agents and local tasks. It’s trying to keep PCs, Copilot, and its cloud right at the center of the AI race.
Based on reporting by Fortune, Sebastian Herrera — read the original for the full story.
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Microsoft spent Wednesday trying to reframe Windows for the AI era, not as a side feature set but as the place where its software, cloud, and devices all meet. At an event in San Francisco’s Dogpatch Studios, Satya Nadella called Windows a “hybrid intelligence” system: cloud AI on one side, local AI on the other, all tied together in the PC itself.
That push centers on a redesigned Copilot app. Jacob Andreou, who leads Copilot, said the app will be able to handle more work on-device when cloud power isn’t needed, which should make some tasks faster and cheaper. One example Microsoft gave was Copilot gathering the files a person needs for taxes from different parts of a laptop without touching the cloud. The company is also adding an Autopilot feature meant to give users a named agent with a role and a goal, then let it run with tasks like project updates, deadline tracking, reminders, prep work, and reaching out to partners.
This is not just a software story. Microsoft tied the Windows refresh to new hardware built for the same pitch: the Surface Laptop Ultra and the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box. The laptop starts at $2,599 and will be available Oct. 16. The Dev Box costs $5,999 and arrives in November. Nadella was onstage with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, who called the laptop’s RTX Spark “a beast.” Microsoft showed a user editing video, playing games, and running AI workloads at the same time.
The company is also trying to clean up the Copilot mess. Users complained early on about the assistant’s nonstop presence inside Windows, and Microsoft now wants Copilot to feel more like a central hub than a nagging overlay. That matters because Microsoft is fighting on two fronts at once: it still wants to own the enterprise workflow and cloud business, while OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta keep pushing their own AI products. Microsoft says its 365 Copilot has passed 30 million paid seats, and its shares have bounced over the last six months as AI demand keeps feeding its cloud business.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Microsoft is finally acting like AI should fit the operating system, not cosplay as a pop-up assistant. That’s the right instinct, and a calmer one: fewer Copilots, more actual work. The real competition now is for the boring middle of enterprise life, where the money lives and the hype has to grow up.
Read more about this at: Fortune
