Welcome, AI enthusiasts. Microsoft wrapped up Construct 2025 this week with a wave of AI announcements, all advancing its ambitious vision for an “open agentic web.”
We partnered with Microsoft to bring you an inside take a look at their 5 biggest AI releases — from GitHub Copilot’s autonomous coding agent to Copilot Tuning’s no-code AI customization, and far more. Let’s get into it!
In today’s AI rundown:
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GitHub’s autonomous AI coding agent arrives
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Constructing a secure agentic future on Windows
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Copilot Tuning enables latest AI customization
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Azure AI Foundry debuts advanced agent tools
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Microsoft’s breakthrough in scientific discovery
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Plus, CTO Kevin Scott on Microsoft’s open AI ecosystem
MICROSOFT BUILD 2025
CODING AGENTS
🤖 GitHub’s autonomous AI coding agent arrives
Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu
The Rundown: Microsoft unveiled the GitHub Copilot coding agent, marking the evolution of Copilot from an AI assistant to an autonomous team member that may be assigned GitHub issues and create pull requests.
The main points:
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The agent starts work when assigned a GitHub issue, making a draft pull request and iterating based on review comments.
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It operates asynchronously by spinning up a secure development environment, and analyzing code using advanced reasoning.
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Available to Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ customers, it excels at tasks like adding features, fixing bugs, refactoring code, and improving documentation.
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Security is built-in: the agent respects branch protections, requires human approval before running CI/CD workflows, and follows custom security policies.
Why it matters: With the recent rise of AI coding agents like GitHub Copilot’s latest coding agent, there’s a fundamental shift in how software gets built. Developers are transitioning from writing every line of code to becoming orchestrators of agents, delegating tasks while specializing in architecture, strategy, and inventive problem-solving.
WINDOWS MCP & AI FOUNDRY
🔒 Constructing a secure agentic future on Windows
Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu
The Rundown: Microsoft is advancing its Windows AI strategy with native support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) on Windows 11 and the introduction of Windows AI Foundry — a foundation for AI agents to operate throughout the Windows ecosystem.
The main points:
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MCP integration will bring Anthropic’s protocol to Windows 11, enabling AI agents to attach with native apps, system services, and external tools.
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Microsoft also introduced the Windows AI Foundry, a brand new framework to assist developers fine-tune and run AI models directly on Windows PCs.
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Windows AI Foundry supports open-source and custom model deployment across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs in Copilot+ PCs, enabling on-device capabilities.
Why it matters: Microsoft is pushing for Windows to be the premier platform for AI agent development and deployment. By moving AI processing to the client-side, the corporate is enabling faster, safer, and privacy-conscious AI experiences.
COPILOT TUNING
🔥 Copilot Tuning enables latest AI customization
Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu
The Rundown: Microsoft also debuted Microsoft 365 Copilot Tuning, a low-code tool built into Microsoft Copilot Studio that allows orgs to fine-tune AI models using their very own internal data, workflows, and domain expertise without requiring technical skills.
The main points:
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Firms can train AI models on their proprietary documents, processes, and institutional knowledge to create company-specific agents in Agent Builder.
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The low-code tooling permits you to construct domain-specific AI agents that reflect organizational language, terminology, and format for targeted tasks.
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Copilot Tuning will roll out with three pre-built “recipes” that focus on tasks including Expert Q&A, Document Generation and Document Summarization.
Why it matters: With Copilot Tuning, Microsoft is making it easier for orgs to construct tailored agents. By enabling firms to create agents from proprietary data without technical expertise, Microsoft is attempting to democratize customization previously limited to groups with significant engineering and data science resources.
AZURE AI FOUNDRY
⚡️Azure AI Foundry debuts advanced agent tools
Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu
The Rundown: Azure AI Foundry launched key updates including latest AI models, fine-tuning, enhanced interoperability, and multi-agent orchestration that expand developers’ ability to design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents.
The main points:
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The platform now offers access to xAI’s Grok 3, Black Forest Labs’ Flux Pro 1.1, alongside over 10K open-source models from Hugging Face.
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Developers can fully customize these models through fine-tuning techniques including LoRA/QLoRA and DPO, tailoring them for specific business use cases.
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Foundry Agent Service is now generally available, offering developers ready-to-use templates, actions, and connectors to construct secure AI agents.
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Other tools include the model leaderboard for rating top AI models by task and a model router, which selects the most effective model for every query in real time.
Why it matters: Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry updates make it easier for developers to construct and manage AI applications and agents that collaborate across complex workflows. These advances pave the way in which for more scalable, enterprise-ready AI solutions that may more seamlessly integrate with existing business data and processes.
MICROSOFT DISCOVERY
🔬 Microsoft’s breakthrough in scientific discovery
Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu
The Rundown: At Construct 2025, Microsoft also unveiled Microsoft Discovery, an AI-powered platform designed to revolutionize scientific R&D by deploying specialized AI agents throughout the complete research lifecycle.
The main points:
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Microsoft Discovery taps specialized AI agents to automate and enhance every phase of the scientific research lifecycle, from ideation to experimentation.
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Built as a versatile, modular environment, it allows organizations to customize and extend workflows with industry-specific tools, plugins, and data sources.
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The platform fosters seamless collaboration between researchers and AI agents, enabling agents to handle the routine, data-intensive tasks.
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It’s built on top of a graph-based knowledge engine that maps complex relationships between proprietary data and scientific research.
Why it matters: Microsoft Discovery is a daring bet on AI-accelerated science. While the platform could completely revolutionize scientific research, its success hinges on whether AI can move beyond automating routine tasks to really driving the creative problem-solving that results in real scientific breakthroughs.
BEHIND THE SCENES
🦄 CTO Kevin Scott on Microsoft’s open AI ecosystem
Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu
The Rundown: Talking to journalists before Construct and again on stage, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott outlined the corporate’s vision for an “agentic web” where AI agents move autonomously across platforms and tools in collaboration with people.
The main points:
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Scott cautioned that closed approaches could stifle AI innovation, comparing it to how proprietary web protocols would’ve led to a “less interesting version of the online.”
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Microsoft is adding native support for open agent protocols including MCP and A2A across platforms like Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry.
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Scott was particularly enthusiastic about MCP (developed by Anthropic), comparing it to HTTP for its simplicity in connecting AI models with external tools.
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Microsoft also introduced NLWeb, an open-source project to assist turn web sites and APIs into agentic apps, and make content accessible to agents using MCP.
Why it matters: Microsoft’s embrace of open AI protocols is a strategic shift from its historically closed approach, likely learning from past antitrust battles and browser market losses. This approach could ultimately determine whether we get a vibrant, interconnected agentic web or a landscape controlled by competing tech giants.
GO DEEPER
INTERVIEW
🎥 ICYMI: Watch Satya Nadella and Rowan Cheung
In case you missed it, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and The Rundown CEO Rowan Cheung sat down for an exclusive conversation for deeper insights on:
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Microsoft’s vision for the “agentic web”
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Why your next job could be AI agent manager
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What happens when 95% of code is AI-generated
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Where AI agents will create probably the most value first
Listen on YouTube, Twitter/X, Spotify, or Apple Music.
