Microsoft goes full agentic at Build 2025 with new AI tools, from Copilot coding agent to Discovery

By Admin

20 May, 2025

At Microsoft Build 2025, the tech world witnessed a bold leap into the future as Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, unveiled a series of transformative updates aimed at building an open agentic web. Held on May 19, the annual developer conference showcased Microsoft’s latest innovations designed to empower developers, businesses, and researchers through next-generation AI tools and platforms.

“Today, at Build, we showed you how we are building the open agentic web. It is reshaping every layer of the stack, and our goal is to help every dev build apps and agents that empower people and orgs everywhere,” said Nadella in a post on X.

Let’s dive into the most exciting announcements that define Microsoft’s agentic future.

GitHub Copilot Becomes a Full Coding Agent

What started as a helpful AI pair programmer has now evolved into a fully autonomous coding agent. The new GitHub Copilot agent can now handle tasks like bug fixes, code refactoring, documentation improvements, and feature additions — all on its own. Developers can assign tasks via GitHub Issues or Copilot Chat in Visual Studio Code.

Once initiated, the Copilot agent:

• Launches a secure development environment via GitHub Actions
  
  

• Clones the repository and analyzes the codebase
  
  

• Creates a draft pull request while maintaining transparency with session logs
  
  

• Incorporates custom instructions and security protocols
  
  

• Operates across GitHub’s web, mobile, and CLI platforms
  
  

Currently available to Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ users, this innovation is a productivity game-changer for software teams.

Copilot Tuning: Personalized AI for Every Business

To further personalize AI, Microsoft introduced Copilot Tuning within Copilot Studio. This low-code feature enables businesses to fine-tune AI to match their unique tone, language, data, and workflows — without writing a single line of code.

Whether it’s a legal firm or a manufacturing unit, businesses can now create domain-specific AI agents that automate key tasks by blending institutional knowledge with client-specific context. Microsoft assures that all custom data remains securely within the Microsoft 365 service boundary, ensuring compliance and privacy.

Also new is multi-agent orchestration, allowing AI agents from different departments (like HR, IT, and Marketing) to collaborate on complex, cross-functional tasks — such as onboarding a new employee — seamlessly and intelligently.

Azure AI Foundry: Supercharged AI Application Platform

Microsoft’s all-encompassing AI platform — Azure AI Foundry — received a massive boost. The platform now supports over 10,000 models, including open-source and proprietary options from providers like Meta, Hugging Face, Mistral, and Grok 3 & Grok 3 Mini.

Some standout features:

• Foundry Agent Service: Create agents to automate workflows
  
  

• Agentic Retrieval in Azure AI Search: Intelligent search powered by AI agents
  
  

• Deep integration with Copilot Studio
  
  

• Compatibility with enterprise tools for identity, security, and management
  
  

According to Nadella, Foundry is “the complete app platform for building apps and agents.”

NLWeb: HTML for the Agentic Web

Enter NLWeb, an open-source project that Nadella described as the “HTML for the agentic web.” Designed to simplify AI integration into websites, NLWeb allows developers to embed a natural language interface in just a few lines of code.

Users can interact with site content using plain English queries, while developers benefit from:

• Model Context Protocol (MCP) server integration
  
  

• Seamless use of structured formats like Schema.org and RSS
  
  

• Compatibility with a range of AI models and proprietary datasets
  
  

NLWeb aligns perfectly with Microsoft’s vision of a decentralized AI-driven web, where intelligent agents perform tasks on behalf of users.

Microsoft Discovery: AI-Powered R&D Breakthroughs

One of the most futuristic announcements was Microsoft Discovery, a powerful platform designed to accelerate scientific research and innovation. Leveraging agentic AI, Discovery helps scientists and engineers automate complex workflows like idea generation, simulation, experimentation, and analysis.

This collaborative platform integrates existing tools and datasets to enhance knowledge sharing across R&D teams. As Nadella highlighted, “Discovery uses agents to generate ideas, simulate results, and learn.” A key example was its success in identifying a promising new coolant alternative that avoids harmful "forever chemicals".

Final Thoughts: Microsoft’s Vision of the Agentic Future

The updates at Microsoft Build 2025 mark a turning point in the AI landscape. From developer tools to enterprise solutions and scientific research, Microsoft is redefining what’s possible by embedding agentic AI at every level of the stack.

This year’s theme was clear: build with agents, for everyone. Whether you're writing code, customizing business workflows, or conducting scientific research, Microsoft is providing the tools and infrastructure to make intelligent agents your new digital teammates.

As Microsoft continues to champion openness, interoperability, and security, the future of the open agentic web looks not just promising — but inevitable.