New technology tends to reach developers first and is often followed by finance departments, where it must meet a higher standard, with every number traceable and trusted. Microsoft says Copilot in Excel is being tested against that reality to work like a trusted analyst, embedded in day-to-day finance work. With new features like reusable skills, data connections and clearer audit trails, the aim is to help teams spend less time rebuilding analyses and more time making decisions.

As datacenters that power cloud and AI services become more essential, communities are paying closer attention to how this infrastructure affects local resources, particularly water. Microsoft has long prioritized water stewardship and last year reached a milestone toward its 2030 goal, replenishing more water than it used globally. Advances in cooling technology have improved water efficiency in the company’s datacenters by nearly 90% since the early 2000s, and a new datacenter design introduced in 2024 consumes zero water for cooling during operations. Read on for more about how it works.

Artificial intelligence is already common in schools, with most students and educators using it in some form. But a new Microsoft report suggests the focus is shifting, with many calling for more training and clearer guidelines to ensure it supports real learning, not just faster work. New tools in Microsoft 365 Education aim to help, combining lesson planning, assignments and study aids designed to encourage deeper thinking.

When market research firm Kantar handed Copilot licenses to every employee, chaos and creativity erupted. Andy Doyle, the company’s chief people and agent officer, joins the WorkLab podcast to share how a wave of maverick experimentation led to the creation of more than 15,000 AI agents — and an “agent factory” that’s reshaping the enterprise. He explains how the experiment pushed leaders  to rethink control, scale and what’s possible when you let employees drive transformation.  

Microsoft is shifting its cybercrime strategy , focusing on the infrastructure behind attacks rather than isolated threats. In a case unsealed Wednesday, the company said it simultaneously targeted two widely used malware tools, Amadey and StealC, after AI-assisted analysis showed they rely on shared systems. The tools, often deployed together to access devices and steal sensitive data, were linked to more than 140,000 cyberattacks in just the first two weeks of May. Working with Europol and industry partners, Microsoft said it has since cut off criminal control of 18,000 computers to disrupt the broader “assembly line” that enables cyberattacks to scale. 

Microsoft’s first datacenter in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, is now fully operational, ahead of schedule. The facility has about 550 full-time employees on-site and is continuing to hire more staff as it builds a second facility adjacent to the first. The company estimates it will spend $4.7 billion locally on construction between 2024 and 2028. Read more about the datacenters and Microsoft’s investments in the area.

Microsoft has introduced a new agent to help organizations make sense of failures in increasingly complex AI systems. As applications, models, APIs and infrastructure become more interconnected, failures are harder to trace and no longer happen in isolation. The new Azure Copilot Observability Agent correlates signals across systems to help teams monitor performance and resolve issues more quickly.

Microsoft is planning one of the largest capacity expansions in its history with a new datacenter campus in Pecos, Texas, expected to add about 2 gigawatts to meet growing customer demand. The multibillion-dollar investment over the next five to seven years reflects both immediate infrastructure needs and the future trajectory of AI and advanced computing. Microsoft said the project will support more than 6,000 construction jobs and create hundreds of permanent roles once the campus is operational. 

As AI moves from experimentation into implementation, some companies are struggling to translate early momentum into broad business impact beyond isolated use cases. A new e-book from Microsoft explores why progress may stall and outlines four key areas where organizations are focusing to get more value from AI.

Though Australian workers are quickly adopting AI, many organizations aren’t redesigning work fast enough to keep up. New data from Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index suggests culture and leadership — not technology — are now the biggest barriers to AI in the workplace. The findings point to a growing gap between how employees work and how quickly leadership and operating models are evolving to support this shift.

Right now, people have to manually find and connect tools to make AI useful, then keep everything up-to-date themselves. That may work with a few tools, but it gets too complex as more companies and developers create their own. Microsoft and partners like Cisco, Google, Nvidia and others are introducing a new open standard called Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD). It creates a shared, secure way for AI tools to be published and found, so AI systems can automatically discover and use relevant capabilities.

AI is helping cyberattacks move faster and scale more easily. But even as methods evolve, stolen identity is still one of the most common entry points. Attackers don’t need to break down every defense, just to exploit the right one. Organizations are reshaping security in response, turning to more connected approaches to better prevent, detect and respond to identity threats. Read more about how Microsoft is working to end security fragmentation in the age of AI.

Microsoft and Y Combinator (YC) are expanding their partnership to give founders building on Azure access to Microsoft Foundry and the same AI infrastructure YC uses internally. The move reflects a shift in how AI startups are built, with advanced systems and computing power needed from the beginning. Through Microsoft for Startups, founders can also get credits, technical guidance and go‑to‑market support to help move their products toward enterprise use.

Doctor visits often feel rushed, with attention split between patient and screen, leaving many unheard. The problem is especially acute for women, whose symptoms are more likely to be dismissed or misdiagnosed. A new perspective from Kearney and Microsoft, part of their [w]Health initiative, suggests better care starts with listening — and that AI tools like Dragon Copilot can help give clinicians the time and space to shift more toward human connection.

Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork is now generally available worldwide, bringing AI that can take on complex, multi-step tasks from start to finish. In one example, an engineering team used Cowork to edit batch‑job spreadsheets and generate dependency flow charts after every change, automating work that had required careful manual effort. Read more on how organizations can put Copilot Cowork to work.

Microsoft rolled out its latest Surface devices Tuesday, powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 chips. The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop deliver more than 50% faster graphics performance than the previous generation and longer battery life to keep up with everything from creative work to running local AI models. The devices are available starting today.

A few years into her time as a technology leader, Julie Averill started asking herself a question she couldn’t shake: What is this actually for? As CIO at lululemon and REI, the work was clear on paper, but her real impact showed up somewhere else.
In her new book, “Chief Impact Officer,” she unpacks that shift — and what it takes to build trust with your team when technology is changing fast.

Her neighbors thought she was a bit eccentric when she started planting blueberries in pots in rural western Türkiye, but Pinar Ünsal persisted, using her training as an engineer to focus on data-driven farming.  Today, her thriving harvest is powered by an AI-enriched app built on Microsoft Azure — delivering crop insights from real-time satellite imagery, hyperlocal weather reports and real-time data that help her grow smarter, save time and manage risk.

What happens after a malicious email lands might matter more than expected. A year of production data and real-world benchmarking from Microsoft suggests email security doesn’t stop at the inbox. The report finds that post-delivery detection and cleanup are playing a growing role, even in layered setups designed to block threats before they arrive. Read on about a shift in how protection works in practice.

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella shares thoughts on the future of the firm in an AI-driven economy, and why every company will need to compound the loop between their human capital and token capital. Read his post.

Hiring managers have changed what they’re looking for. It’s not just about using more tools; they want people with a deeper set of uniquely human capabilities.  New Microsoft research shows how fast that shift is happening: about 70% of the skills used in most jobs are expected to change by 2030, AI literacy now appears in job listings around six times more often than a year ago, and 66% of leaders say they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills. All of this points to an opportunity for educators to help shape the future. Read on for five new fundamentals reshaping the future of the workforce. 

AI systems are now part of everyday work, and when something goes wrong, investigators need a clearer way to understand what happened. Security teams are already digging into incidents that involve Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI services, but without structure, it can be hard to piece together a coherent account. To help, Microsoft is releasing a new investigator playbook designed to help reconstruct AI-related activity using signals that are already available across the company’s security products.

Across marketing organizations, a familiar tension is emerging around AI: if everyone is using the same tools, will everything begin to sound the same? In a new blog post, Tracie Westby, who leads integrated marketing for Commercial Cloud and AI at Microsoft, says the answer has less to do with the technology itself and more to do with how it’s applied.

Westby sees AI less as a disruptor and more as a mirror that reflects the clarity — or ambiguity — behind the work, and the leadership guiding it. More immediately, she says, AI is removing friction from creative tasks, giving teams more space to focus on ideas.

Read more here on why she says creativity isn’t being replaced but rather reshaped and even strengthened in the era of AI.

Graduating university students booing AI during commencement addresses should be a “wake-up call for the tech sector,” Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, writes in a new post.

Smith returned to his alma mater, Princeton University, over Memorial Day weekend, where he saw firsthand how students are thinking about AI. They recognize the technology’s benefits but “want to keep AI in its proper place,” he writes.

“They want the future to be determined by humans deciding the role of machines, not by machines deciding the role of humans,” he writes.

Read on for more on why Smith believes AI will be shaped by people, especially the next generation entering the workforce.

What can disability teach us about leadership? Microsoft design leader Dave Dame shares lessons from his life with cerebral palsy—from learning to embrace imperfection to building trust and better teams along the way.

Cancer treatment has gotten more precise over time, as doctors first classified the disease by where it began in the body and, more recently, by the mutations found inside cancer cells to help find the right drugs to treat it.

But why can two people with seemingly similar cancers respond so differently to the same medication? Microsoft researcher Lorin Crawford thinks the answer lies in how tumors actually behave, not just how they’re categorized.

Scammers are using increasing interest in AI to trick people online. Microsoft Security reports that in recent months, cyber attackers have been impersonating popular AI tools to lure people in via phishing, fake ads and search engine optimization-driven attacks that ultimately defraud users or infect their systems with malware. For a look at four of the biggest scams Microsoft’s uncovered and what the company is doing to stop them, read more here.

XBOX’s 2026 Games Showcase highlighted a mix of new titles, hardware and ideas, while also giving a nod to its past. Marking 25 years, the company introduced a limited-edition Series X25 console and controller inspired by the original XBOX. It also confirmed Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution as console exclusives and shared updates across major franchises and characters. Read on for all the news and announcements from the showcase here.

The world of AI is moving too fast for any organization to figure it out alone. That’s why Microsoft recently convened 250 customers at the leading edge of AI transformation for a summit. The goal was to shorten the distance between the teams building Copilot and the people actually using it. As Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer of AI at Work, writes in a new post, they learned the reality is that AI results depend more on leaders’ choices than the tools they buy. Read on for the five major takeaways from the summit about AI adaption in the workplace.