Microsoft Build 2026 is scheduled for June 2-3 in San Francisco, focusing on AI agents, native Windows applications, and developer tools. CEO Satya Nadella will deliver the keynote on June 2 at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The event is targeting AI developers, technical leaders, and enterprise developers.
Event Details
- Location: Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
- Registration: Free for digital attendance; in-person access costs $1,099 and requires approval
- Session catalog: 375 options available, some exclusive to in-person attendees
Key Announcements
Hardware: Surface RTX Spark Dev Box
- A developer device for running local AI models
- Equipped with Nvidia’s Arm-based Spark RTX chip and 128GB unified memory
- Includes preinstalled applications: Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, and Windows 11 Pro (dark mode preconfigured)
- Pricing and full specifications not yet announced
- Availability: United States later this year
Software: Windows Developer Features
- Coreutils (Linux-like command-line utilities) now run natively on Windows 11
- Users can create, run, and interact with Linux containers through Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
- A new Intelligent Terminal provides context to AI agents
Project Solara
- An Android-based operating system designed for running agents across multiple devices
- Developed in collaboration with Qualcomm and MediaTek
- Demonstrated on a desktop hub and a digital badge
Scout Assistant and Autopilot Suite
- Scout Assistant: An always-on AI assistant built on OpenClaw
- Integrated with Microsoft 365 apps (Outlook, OneDrive, Teams)
- Capabilities include calendar organization, expense reporting, and email writing
- Part of a broader "Autopilot" agent suite
- Desktop preview available for Frontier customers in the United States
New AI Models
- Seven models announced, including MAI-Thinking-1 (35 billion active parameters, 128K context window) for reasoning
- Updates to image, voice, code generation, and transcription models
Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC)
- Allow developers to set guardrails for AI agent access
- OpenClaw companion app enables setup or connection to agents in a sandboxed environment
Quantum Computing: Majorana 2 Chip
- Next-generation quantum chip with qubits described as 1,000 times more accurate
- Improvement attributed to a new material stack
- Microsoft aims to build a practical quantum computer by 2029
Conference Themes
AI Agents
Microsoft will feature OpenAI’s Peter Steinberger, creator of the OpenClaw AI agent system.
- Sessions will cover building OpenClaw agents on Windows, using Windows 365 cloud PCs to run them, and designing systems for both users and LLMs
- Agentic coding with GitHub Copilot is a focus
Native Windows Apps
Microsoft is promoting AI-assisted development of native Windows 11 applications using WinUI 3.
- Sessions will discuss using agentic AI to port x86 applications to Arm versions of Windows
Linux-Based AI on Windows
- Sessions will discuss improvements to Windows Terminal and WSL, including enabling AI-powered applications
- Azure Linux 4.0 will be covered in the context of cloud-native and AI workloads
Additional Context
- Xbox and gaming sessions are not listed in the catalog. Microsoft previously canceled Copilot gaming features for Xbox.
- Microsoft previously announced AI agent controls for the Windows taskbar and Model Context Protocol integrations for Windows 11; the latter has not yet been shipped.