Here is Everything Microsoft Announced at Ignite 2025

Microsoft just dropped over 70 announcements at its Ignite conference in San Francisco. The TL;DR? The company is going all-in on "Agents"—autonomous bots that do work for you—and breaking its exclusive reliance on OpenAI by bringing Anthropic to the party.

Grant Harvey

July 29, 2024

The Complete Guide to Microsoft Ignite 2025

If you thought the AI news cycle was slowing down, Microsoft just politely asked you to hold its beer... 70+ new beers, actually.

At Ignite 2025 in San Francisco, Satya Nadella and team unloaded a dump truck of announcements (over 70 major updates). If there is one singular theme to take away, it is this: The era of the Chatbot is over; the era of the enterprise Agent has begun (and with it, the ability to manage, observe, and secure your agents at scale).

Bascially, Microsoft is fundamentally restructuring its cloud and productivity suite around "Agents"—AI that doesn't just talk, but does. Watch the keynote here.

First up, the TL;DR

Here is the quick breakdown of every single major announcement from the event.

1. The "Agentic" Shift & Agent 365

The headline strategy is Agent 365, a new "control plane" for IT administrators. As employees start building their own bots, companies are facing "Shadow AI." Agent 365 is the solution.

‍The Registry: A centralized map of every agent in an organization, showing who built it, what it does, and what data it touches.‍
Governance: IT can now monitor agent behavior, map connections between agents, and shut down "rogue" bots that violate compliance.‍
Agent ID: Powered by Microsoft Entra, every agent now gets a digital identity (like a passport). This ensures an agent only accesses the data it has permission to see.

2. New "First-Party" Agents

Microsoft isn't just letting you build agents; they are selling pre-made ones designed to automate specific jobs:‍

‍Sales Development Agent: A fully autonomous bot that researches prospects, qualifies leads, and emails them 24/7. It hands off to a human only when a deal is hot.‍
Employee Experience Agents: A trio of bots—Workforce Insights (for HR data), People Agent (for finding colleagues/skills), and Learning Agent (for upskilling).‍
SharePoint Agents: These can now create pages and lists. You just type "@SharePoint create a tracking list for Q4," and it builds the structure automatically.‍
The Interpreter: Agents in Microsoft Teams can now speak to other agents. For example, a Teams agent can ask a Jira agent for project blockers, creating a "multi-agent" workflow.

3. Microsoft 365 Copilot Updates

The tool formally known as "Chat" is getting a massive IQ boost via Work IQ, a new intelligence layer that uses memory and inference to understand the context of your job (e.g., knowing that "The Project" refers to the Q3 marketing launch).

‍Copilot Actions: "One-tap" prompts in Outlook to triage inboxes or schedule meetings instantly.‍
Agent Mode in Office:
- Excel: Can now write Python code, generate charts, and analyze risks from a simple prompt.‍
- PowerPoint: Builds decks with storytelling structures and company branding.‍
- Word: Organizes complex information into strategic plans.‍
App Builder: A new feature allowing anyone to build a functional app within M365 Copilot just by describing it (e.g., "Build me a shift scheduling app").

4. The Developer Stack: Microsoft Foundry

Microsoft unveiled Foundry, a unified platform for building AI apps, effectively rebranding and organizing their dev tools.

‍Model Router: A new tool that automatically routes tasks to the best model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Llama, or Mistral) based on cost, speed, and performance.‍
Foundry IQ: A context engineering layer that helps developers manage "RAG" (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) so agents don't hallucinate.

5. Data & Analytics: Fabric IQ

To power these agents, data needs to be clean.

Fabric IQ: Applies generative AI to your data lake, allowing agents to understand business logic (e.g., "What is our definition of 'churn'?").

New Databases:

Azure HorizonDB: A new high-performance PostgreSQL database optimized for AI.
Azure DocumentDB: Now Generally Available (GA), fully compatible with MongoDB.
SQL Server 2025: Now GA, with built-in AI capabilities.

6. Hardware & Infrastructure

‍Windows 365 Link: A $349 mini-PC that streams Windows from the cloud. It has no local data, boots instantly, and is designed for security.‍
Azure Cobalt 200: A new custom CPU that offers 50% better performance than the previous generation.‍
Azure Boost: Updates to storage and networking throughput (up to 400 Gbps) to handle massive AI training loads.

7. Security‍

‍Security Copilot: Now embedded directly into Microsoft 365 E5 licenses, democratizing AI security tools.‍
Predictive Shielding: A Defender feature that uses AI to anticipate where an attacker will move next and blocks the path.‍
Deepfake Defense: New capabilities to detect AI-manipulated content in real-time.

The message from Ignite 2025 is clear: The "chat" phase was just the warm-up. The "agent" phase—where software acts autonomously on your behalf—is the main event, and Microsoft is building the tools to manage it all in one place.

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Top Takeaways from the Keynote:

AI as a Turning Point: Beyond Speed (21:17)
Prediction: AI Agents Will Eliminate Soul-Crushing Work (21:34)
Prediction: AI Will Drive Economic Growth and Stability (22:26)
Insight: Four Common Reasons AI Projects Fail (25:39)
Actionable Takeaway: The "Frontier Firm" Success Framework (26:40)
Key Mindset Shift (28:27)
Direction: Democratizing Intelligence through Copilot and Agents (29:03)
Key AI Trait: Putting AI in the Flow of Human Ambition (30:12)
Key AI Trait: Ubiquitous Innovation (30:39)
Key AI Trait: Governance and Observability (31:02)
Insight: The Power of Work IQ (35:15)
Actionable Takeaway: An AI Strategy Already Exists in Your Data (38:08)
Direction: Copilot as the Orchestrator of Agents (39:26)
New Product Announcement: Word, Excel, PowerPoint Agents in Copilot Chat (53:45)
New Product Announcement: Enhanced Copilot Chat (54:09)
New Product Announcement: Security Copilot in M365 E5 (54:37)
Insight: AI in Healthcare Improves Care and Saves Time (58:01)
New Product Announcement: Application Builder in M365 Copilot (1:04:43)
Insight/Direction: Agent IQ for Developers and Model Choice (1:06:36)
New Partner Announcement: Anthropic Models on Microsoft Foundry (1:17:38)
New Product Announcement: Model Router (1:22:12)
New Concept: The New Intelligence Layer (Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ) (1:23:20)
Prediction: 1.3 Billion Agents Deployed by 2028 (1:44:06)
New Product Announcement: Agent 365 (1:44:45)
Insight: The Rise of "Shadow AI" (1:53:42)
Actionable Takeaway: Balancing Risk and Agility (1:56:20)
Foundry Insight: Optimizing Models for Cost and Quality (2:01:44)
Azure Infrastructure Insight (2:17:17)
Insight: Plummeting AI Costs (2:17:40)
Actionable Takeaway: Sustainable AI (2:18:04)
New Product Announcement: Azure Cobalt 200 Offer (2:20:49)
New Product Announcement: AKS Automatic (2:22:38)
Insight: Data as the Foundation for AI (UBS Case Study) (2:36:05)

Product Announcements & Introductions

Here is the specific list of product announcements and introductions from the keynote, hyperlinked to their exact timecodes:

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents in Copilot Chat (53:45)
Copilot Chat Inbox Reasoning (54:09)
Security Copilot in M365 E5 (54:37)
Application Builder (1:04:43)
Code to Cloud Integration (Defender & GitHub Advanced Security) (1:13:52)
Anthropic Models (Claude Sonnet & Opus) on Microsoft Foundry (1:17:38)
Model Router (General Availability) (1:22:12)
New Intelligence Layer (Fabric IQ & Foundry IQ) (1:23:25)
Microsoft Agent Factory (1:42:17)
Agent 365 (1:44:45)
Foundry Control Plane (New Governance Capabilities) (1:58:48)
Azure Cobalt 200 (2:20:49)
AKS Automatic (2:23:00)
Azure Copilot Migration Agent (2:30:06)

Our Take: Microsoft Just Built the “Operating System“ for AI Agents

Companies are drowning in AI agents. Sales agents. Customer service agents. Data analysis agents. HR agents. Some built by IT, most created by employees who found a cool tool online (maybe even something we showed y’all!). Nobody knows what's running, what data agents can access, or which ones might be security risks.

Microsoft just solved this at Ignite 2025 with Agent 365, a control plane that discovers, manages, and secures every AI agent in your organization. Think of it as the IT admin dashboard for your robot workforce.

Here's what makes this a big deal:

Agent 365 creates a complete registry of every agent in your org including “shadow agents“ that employees created on their own. No more surprises when Finance discovers Marketing's been running an unapproved agent with access to customer data for three months.
It applies risk-based access controls to agents just like employees. IT can limit agents to only the resources they need, block risky agents before they cause problems, and set conditional access policies based on agent behavior.
The system offers real-time monitoring showing connections between agents, people, and data. IT teams can finally see what agents are actually doing and measure their impact on the organization.

Oh, also? Security is built in: Agent 365 integrates Microsoft Defender for threat protection, Microsoft Entra for identity management, and Microsoft Purview for data governance. Agents get the same enterprise-grade security as human employees.

Microsoft also announced concrete examples of what these managed agents look like:

‍Sales Development Agent (available now via Frontier program): A fully autonomous sales agent that researches prospects, crafts personalized outreach, and follows up 24/7. When leads are qualified, it hands them off to human sellers. Basically, an SDR that never sleeps.‍
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents in Copilot Chat: Create high-quality Office content by asking targeted questions to understand your goals. They handle research, formatting, and layout design—no more staring at blank documents.‍
12 new Security Copilot agents embedded in existing security tools to automate alert triage, identity risk management, endpoint compliance, and data remediation.

Oh yeah, and guess who made it official? Anthropic is now officially part of the Azure ecosystem: Microsoft added Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Sonnet, Haiku, and Opus to its library. It is now the only cloud provider hosting both OpenAI and Anthropic.

Flex.

Why this matters: A new IDC study commissioned by Microsoft surveyed 4K+ business leaders and found something striking. While 68% of companies use AI today, there's a massive gap forming.

The top 22% (called “Frontier firms“) are achieving returns three times higher than slow adopters. What separates them? They use AI across an average of seven business functions (not just one or two), they're building custom AI solutions (58% today, jumping to 77% in 24 months), and they're aggressively adopting agentic AI.“

IDC estimates the number of companies using agentic AI will triple in the next two years (the number quoted at Ignite was 1.3 billion agents deployed by 2028. So the window to become a Frontier firm is closing.

Agent 365 gives organizations the infrastructure to scale agents without losing control and solving the exact concerns (security, governance, visibility) that have kept IT departments from embracing autonomous AI.

It's available now through Microsoft's Frontier program.

In our opinion, Microsoft is admitting two things: 1) The "Chatbot" interface is a bottleneck; real value comes from agents doing work in the background, but that background needs to come to the forefont and be visibile in order to be reliable at scale. 2) The world is multi-model. By adopting Anthropic, Microsoft is positioning Azure as the ultimate neutral ground for AI, regardless of which model wins the race.

WHAT TO DO:

For IT: Get ready for Agent 365. You need to audit what bots your employees are already using before "Shadow AI" becomes a security nightmare.
For Devs: Test the Model Router. Stop paying premium prices for simple tasks—set up a system that routes easy queries to cheaper models and hard ones to Claude/GPT-4.
For Everyone: Try Copilot Actions in Outlook. If you can automate your inbox triage, you might actually get to go home on time.

Diving Deeper into Microsoft Ignite 2025: The Era of the Autonomous Agent is Here

If 2023 was the year of the Chatbot, and 2024 was the year of the Pilot, 2025 is officially the year of the Agent.

At Microsoft Ignite 2025 in San Francisco, the tech giant unveiled a sweeping transformation of its AI strategy. The headline is no longer just about "chatting" with your computer; it is about having autonomous agents that do the work for you. From managing calendars to writing code and even negotiating supply chains, Microsoft is betting its future on an agentic ecosystem that lives in the background of your workday.

Here is a comprehensive deep dive into the major announcements, the strategy behind them, and what this means for the future of work.

1. The Shift to "Work IQ" and Agents

Microsoft CEO of Commercial Business, Judson Althoff, opened the conference with a candid admission: while AI adoption is faster than any technology in history, the success rate of AI projects hasn't been perfect. The solution? Moving from "random acts of innovation" to a structured, agent-based approach powered by Work IQ.

Work IQ is Microsoft's new intelligence layer. Unlike previous iterations that simply searched for keywords in your documents, Work IQ utilizes "inference" and "memory." It understands the context of your job—who your boss is, what projects are critical right now, and how your different files relate to one another.

This powers the new Agent 365, a centralized "control plane" for IT administrators. As employees begin building their own agents (more on that below), "Shadow AI" is becoming a massive risk. Agent 365 gives companies a map of every AI agent running in their system, who built it, and what data it is accessing. It's the "air traffic control" for the autonomous workforce.

2. The New Agent Workforce

Microsoft introduced a fleet of ready-made agents designed to replace specific job functions or, at the very least, heavily augment them:

The Sales Development Agent: This fully autonomous agent doesn't just write emails; it researches prospects, qualifies leads, and engages them 24/7. It can hand off a "warm" lead to a human seller, effectively automating the top of the sales funnel.

The Excel Agent: For those intimidated by complex formulas, this agent works alongside you. You can ask it to "analyze the inventory risk," and it will write Python code, generate charts, and highlight conditional formatting automatically.

The SharePoint Agent: A boon for internal comms, this agent can build entire SharePoint pages and lists from a simple prompt like, "Create a tracking list for our Q4 marketing campaign."

3. Democratizing Development: Everyone is a Builder

Perhaps the most disruptive announcement is the App Builder within Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft is pushing the idea of "ubiquitous innovation," where a store manager or a HR specialist can build an app in minutes without writing a line of code.

In a live demo, a retail manager used natural language to build a shift-scheduling app simply by describing the problem. The system pulled data from existing spreadsheets and emails to create a functioning dashboard.

For more complex tasks, Copilot Studio has been upgraded with autonomous triggers. Previously, a human had to click a button to start an automation. Now, an agent can be triggered by an event—like an email from a sick employee—and automatically find a replacement, update the calendar, and notify the manager, all without human intervention.

4. The Developer Play: Claude joins the Party

In a move that surprised many, Microsoft announced that Anthropic's Claude 4.5 Sonnet, Haiku and 4.1 Opus models are now available on Azure and Microsoft Foundry.

This is a massive strategic pivot. Historically, Microsoft has been tied at the hip with OpenAI. By bringing Anthropic into the fold, Microsoft is positioning Azure as the "model-agnostic" platform of choice. Developers can now use the Model Router, a feature that automatically selects the best model (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Llama) for a specific task based on cost and performance.

P.S: Mid Keynote, Microsoft also dropped that Gemini 3, Google's new frontier AI model, was also available to use in Copilot the same day that Gemini 3 launched. Double flex.

5. Hardware: The $349 Windows Box

Microsoft also revealed the Windows 365 Link, a piece of hardware that looks like a Mac Mini but acts like a portal. It has no local data and boots in seconds. It is purely a streaming device for Windows 365 Cloud PCs. At $349, it is designed for security-conscious enterprises—if the device is stolen, no data is lost because no data is on the device.

6. Security in the Age of Agents

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With agents acting on our behalf, security is paramount. Microsoft introduced Entra Agent ID, essentially a digital passport for AI agents. Just as employees have ID badges, agents now have verifiable identities. This prevents "rogue agents" from accessing sensitive data they shouldn't have.

Additionally, Security Copilot is now embedded directly into the Microsoft 365 E5 license, bringing AI-powered threat detection to the standard enterprise security suite.

The Verdict

Ignite 2025 makes one thing clear: The "chat" phase of generative AI is ending. We are entering the "agent" phase. Microsoft is building the infrastructure, the hardware, and the software to ensure that when we hand off our work to machines, they have the context, security, and intelligence to get the job done.

If you want to check out any of the direct links to all the announcements made today, we've got them linked below.