From no-code Copilot to low-code Copilot Studio and pro-code Microsoft Foundry — the complete AI ecosystem covering strategy, security, governance, and responsible AI.
From AI assistant to autonomous agent — the three-wave journey toward frontier transformation, built on intelligence + trust.
Copilot launched in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Single-turn prompts, content drafting, and meeting summaries across M365 apps.
Copilot Studio, first-party Researcher and Analyst agents, Agent Builder, multi-model support (GPT-4o + others), and M365 Copilot seat minimum dropped to just 1 user.
Copilot Cowork (Claude-powered long-running tasks), Agent 365 control plane, Work IQ intelligence layer, multi-model routing, and M365 E7 Frontier Suite at $99/user/month.
Released April 2026, built by Mustafa Suleyman's Microsoft AI Superintelligence team. Microsoft's first proprietary production AI models.
Intelligence ensures AI is contextual, relevant, and grounded in your organization's data. Trust ensures it operates safely, securely, and responsibly at enterprise scale. These twin pillars underpin every Copilot and Foundry product decision in 2026.
Frontier Transformation visionMicrosoft hosts the best innovation from across the AI industry — OpenAI GPT-4o, Anthropic Claude (powering Cowork), Meta Llama, Mistral, Cohere, NVIDIA, and Microsoft's own MAI models. Copilot routes to the best model per task regardless of who built it.
Not limited to one model brandMicrosoft committed $80 billion in AI-enabled data centre infrastructure in FY2025, over half in the US. This powers Azure AI, Microsoft Foundry, and all Copilot services with 99.9%+ SLA guarantees at global scale.
Azure Global ScaleA six-layer platform stack from cloud infrastructure to user-facing experiences, unified by security and governance at every layer.
Modular, interoperable layers from infrastructure to experience — all governed by security and responsible AI controls.
AI-first experiences embedded into M365 apps, Windows, and the web. The UI for AI — no technical skills required.
AI chat grounded in the web and org data — free for all M365 subscribers. Available at m365copilot.com, in Teams, Outlook, and Edge.
Full Copilot grounded in your organizational data via Microsoft Graph. AI embedded natively across all M365 apps.
Wave 3's centerpiece, announced March 9, 2026. Powered by Anthropic Claude, Cowork executes long-running multi-step tasks across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and SharePoint — autonomously, with observable progress and full enterprise governance.
AI-powered security across Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview. Now included in M365 E5 at no extra cost. 12 built-in Microsoft agents plus 30+ partner agents for phishing triage, identity risk, and compliance.
AI pair programmer in VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains IDEs. Reduces coding effort by 55% and improves code quality by 39% across a community of 180M+ GitHub developers.
NPU-powered on-device AI for Copilot+ PC hardware. Recall, Cocreator, and Live Captions run locally without cloud round-trips — data stays on-device for maximum privacy and speed.
On-device intelligence, no cloud requiredWeb-grounded AI search and assistance free for anyone. AI-powered answers, image generation, and document analysis in Bing search and the Edge browser sidebar — no M365 license needed.
Free tier available for everyoneSales, Service, and Finance Copilots are now included in M365 Copilot from October 2025 at no extra license cost. Connect CRM and ERP systems and work directly in Outlook, Teams, and Excel.
Included from Oct 2025, no extra licenseThe evolution of Power Virtual Agents — an end-to-end low-code platform for building, customizing, and operating AI agents for any enterprise use case.
Copilot Studio is the evolution of Power Virtual Agents — a low-code platform enabling organizations to build and govern AI agents without deep technical expertise. Both citizen developers and IT teams can create, publish, and monitor agents from a single studio experience.
Consumption-based pricing for external (customer-facing) agent scenarios:
Formerly Azure AI Foundry — rebranded at Ignite 2025 as Microsoft Foundry. The unified pro-code platform for building, deploying, and governing AI at enterprise scale.
Microsoft Foundry is the complete AI developer platform covering the full lifecycle — model selection, fine-tuning, evaluation, deployment, observability, and governance — with Python and C# SDKs, VS Code extensions, and GitHub/Azure DevOps CI/CD integration.
Launched May 2025. Enterprise-grade managed agent hosting with multi-agent orchestration:
Reimagines RAG as a dynamic reasoning process. Achieves 40% better relevance vs. traditional RAG. Simplifies orchestration and improves the quality of grounded AI responses. Currently in public preview.
40% better relevance vs. traditional RAGGenerally available in Microsoft Foundry. Automatically selects the best model per task, balancing speed, quality, and cost across OpenAI GPT, Claude, MAI models, and open-source alternatives. In public preview within the Agent Service.
GA in Foundry / Preview in Agent ServiceRun AI models locally on-device for edge and privacy-sensitive scenarios. Currently in private preview on Android. Keeps sensitive workloads fully on-premises or on-device without cloud round-trips.
Private Preview on AndroidPublic preview. Centralizes identity, policy, observability, and security signals in a single developer portal. GitHub Advanced Security and Microsoft Defender integrations provide full application lifecycle security coverage.
Public PreviewOver 11,000 models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, NVIDIA, and Microsoft. Includes fine-tuning pipelines, evaluation tools, model comparison, and leaderboards to choose the right model for each workload.
11,000+ models availablePyRIT (Python Risk Identification Toolkit) is now integrated into Microsoft Foundry for automated red-teaming of AI systems. Third-party integration with InspectAI and Vivaria available. MCP protocol supported for tool orchestration.
Open-source AI red-teaming toolkitSecurity Copilot — agentic AI defense across Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, Purview, and Sentinel. Included in M365 E5 since November 2025.
400 Security Compute Units (SCUs) per month per 1,000 users (up to 10,000 SCUs/month):
Automatically analyzes user-reported phishing emails, cross-references global threat intelligence, and inspects URLs and attachments. Learns from analyst feedback continuously, reducing false positives and saving SOC analyst hours every day.
Proactively identifies missing Zero Trust policies across your tenant. Found 204% more policy gaps than manual review in early deployments — hardening identity security posture without lengthy manual audit processes.
AI agents for Data Loss Prevention, Insider Risk Management, and privacy compliance. Classify documents, automate DSR responses, and enforce policies with AI-guided workflows across your entire M365 environment.
Microsoft's six foundational principles, operationalized through the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and a decade of responsible AI investment — codified in the 2025 RAI Transparency Report.
AI systems treat all people equitably and avoid discriminatory outcomes across demographic groups.
AI performs reliably and safely under expected and unexpected conditions with human oversight.
AI systems respect privacy and protect data with security built in by design at every layer.
AI empowers all people, including those with disabilities and underrepresented communities globally.
Microsoft explains AI capabilities, limitations, and how AI-generated content is produced to users.
People maintain meaningful control. Microsoft maintains human oversight at every level of AI systems.
Microsoft's responsible AI program follows the NIST Govern-Map-Measure-Manage loop:
Microsoft's AI Red Team (AIRT) proactively tests every major model and product release:
Enterprise-grade controls spanning data sovereignty, regulatory compliance, and AI-specific governance across the full Microsoft portfolio.
Generally available from March 2026. Centralized enterprise-wide agent governance:
From free Copilot Chat to the $99/user/month E7 Frontier Suite — Microsoft's AI licensing for every organizational need.
| Product / SKU | Pricing | Key Inclusions | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot Chat | Included with M365 | Web-grounded AI chat, enterprise data protection, image generation, pay-as-you-go agents | All M365 subscribers |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | $30 /user/mo | Org-grounded AI across all M365 apps, Researcher and Analyst agents, role-based Copilots (Sales/Service/Finance), Copilot Studio internal agents included | Enterprise / EDU from 1 seat |
| Copilot Pro | $20 /user/mo | Consumers with M365 Personal or Family; extensive AI credits; Researcher and Analyst (25 tasks/mo) | Consumers and SMB power users |
| GitHub Copilot Individual | $10 /user/mo | Code completion, IDE chat, multi-model support (GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini) | Individual developers |
| GitHub Copilot Enterprise | $39 /user/mo | All Individual features plus AI code review, PR automation, org-level knowledge bases, custom fine-tuned models | Enterprise dev teams |
| Copilot Studio (external) | $0.01/msg or $200/25K msgs | Pay-as-you-go agent workflows for customer-facing scenarios; internal agents free for M365 Copilot licensees | Orgs building external-facing agents |
| Security Copilot | Included in M365 E5 | 400 SCUs/month per 1,000 users; agents across Defender, Entra, Intune, Purview, and Sentinel | M365 E5 customers |
| Agent 365 | $15 /user/mo standalone | Enterprise agent control plane, centralized management, governance, observability, cost controls | Enterprise standalone |
| Microsoft 365 E7 "Frontier Suite" 🆕 | $99 /user/mo | M365 E5 + M365 Copilot ($30) + Agent 365 ($15) + Microsoft Entra Suite + Copilot Cowork access. Saves ~$18/user/mo vs. buying components separately at $117. | Enterprise from May 1, 2026 |
Data from Microsoft research, IDC surveys, GitHub, and third-party analysis — April 2026.