Windows returns to center stage at Microsoft Build

Windows returns – At this week’s Build keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put Windows front and center—using the Surface RTX Spark Dev Kit and new edge-AI push to frame Windows as the home for AI agents. The same week also brought new AI models, a new Microsoft Execution Cont

For a long stretch, it felt like Microsoft was willing to treat Windows as background noise—something you used, not something it chased with excitement. Then Satya Nadella stepped onto the Build stage and did the opposite.

Windows came first.

Nadella kicked off the keynote with the operating system at the center of Microsoft’s AI ambitions. speaking in sweeping terms about “unmetered intelligence on every desk and in every home.” He didn’t walk the audience through the specific fixes Microsoft has promised for Windows 11. Instead. he chose to win them over with new Surface hardware—especially the Surface RTX Spark Dev Kit—calling it a “dream machine.”.

That choice wasn’t accidental. The unveiling landed just days after Nvidia officially returned to Windows on Arm with its new RTX Spark chips. Both companies are pitching RTX Spark as a turning point for PCs. and the pitch is simple: local AI compute can finally do more than what Microsoft’s earlier Copilot Plus PCs have managed. The result is a more direct promise for developers and businesses that don’t want to pay cloud prices for every workload.

Windows, in Microsoft’s telling, becomes the place where that local power matters.

Windows chief Pavan Davuluri—speaking in an interview with Notepad—framed Microsoft’s job as building the best AI stack it can on Windows. while also making sure the cloud does the heavier lifting when local compute isn’t enough. He argued Microsoft is well-positioned for “hybrid compute. ” where chips like the RTX Spark handle much of the work locally and then intelligently offload to the cloud when more processing is required.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed the idea even harder. He described a future where your laptop can do tasks without waiting for you to use it—going so far as to say that he could “just text it with WhatsApp.” Huang’s broader point was about cost and control: “You don’t want to necessarily run everything in the cloud. because if you can run it locally. it’s free.”.

Nadella echoed that edge-compute momentum during the keynote, saying, “The amount of compute that there is at the edge is astounding,” and adding that “every PC” aggregated together becomes a major pool of compute power.

Microsoft’s gamble is that this is exactly the moment to reassert Windows as essential to the AI era—not just another platform competing for attention.

And the hardware demo is built to sell the idea. Nvidia’s RTX Spark chips are designed for a range of creator-focused laptops and miniature PCs later this year. The chips are also capable of running a 120 billion parameter large language model locally—meaning many AI workloads could run without ever touching the cloud. It’s an especially attractive concept as developers and consumers continue to feel AI budgets tightening.

Microsoft is pitching its own answer for creators and developers with the Surface Laptop Ultra. pairing it with ongoing improvements to Windows 11 performance and developer-friendly additions. This week’s Build also featured deeper embrace of Linux utilities inside Windows. While that didn’t trigger the same kind of audience cheers as the Windows Terminal announcement in 2019. developers who are paying close attention still found momentum in updates such as Coreutils and WSL containers additions.

The Surface Laptop Ultra generated buzz with developers and power users. even if Microsoft isn’t positioning it as a mainstream premium laptop. Davuluri said he expects strong results with STEM and CAD apps on the platform because those applications take advantage of “the same characteristic patterns of high-performance compute.”.

For many in the room. the bigger question was why Windows looks so central now—when it has been under pressure. Davuluri had previously responded to the growing demand for improvements to Windows 11 by laying out a plan to focus on performance. reliability. and overall experiences in the OS a couple of months ago. At Build this week, Microsoft showed performance improvements with side-by-side comparisons of Start menu and taskbar loading faster. The company is also “putting in a lot of effort” to turn Windows 11 around and listen to feedback from a variety of users.

Still, the keynote raised an uncomfortable thought: why not skip ahead?. With Windows 12 not announced, Davuluri offered an answer that sounded less like a timeline and more like a promise. He said there are “a lot of considerations” when thinking about operating system versioning. and that the core proposition—whether the label is Windows 11. Windows 12. or something else—should be defined by end users. how they use the product. and the workflow they’re in. He said the company is focused on making the product experience better for the context people are using it in.

That framing becomes sharper when Microsoft’s AI agent plans enter the picture.

Microsoft has been clear that it sees Windows as a home for AI agents and workloads. Yet it also unveiled Project Solara this week, a new platform for agent-first devices. Microsoft demonstrated a smart employee key card that could run an agent capable of transcribing and recognizing objects in the real world. It also showed a reference design for a device like an Amazon Echo Show–style setup. centered on an AI agent.

The surprise for many was that Project Solara devices are powered by a version of Android, not Windows. Davuluri still expects Solara to show up on Windows devices too. saying Microsoft is “not hard bound to a device specific operating system.” He described a world where Solara could be great on multiple platforms. including Windows 11 locally and Windows 365 instances in the cloud.

Whether agents ultimately run on Windows. Android. or something else may matter less than the bigger shift Nadella showed on stage: for the first time in years. Microsoft wants Windows back in the middle of the AI conversation. Build 2026, the keynote felt like, wasn’t about repairing Windows’ past. It was about convincing developers Windows has a significant role in AI’s future.

That emphasis on Windows landed alongside a broader wave of AI announcements and system changes.

At Build. Microsoft rolled out Microsoft’s new models. with MAI-Thinking-1 as the main addition. alongside six other new models focused on image. voice. transcription. and coding. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said these models are part of a bigger effort to prove Microsoft can become a top AI model creator. Microsoft also showed a Surface Laptop Ultra and a Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at Build. with demonstrations including the Laptop Ultra screen’s brightness and the power of the RTX Spark chip. Microsoft also gave a full breakdown of the components inside the Laptop Ultra and highlighted repairability.

Security and regulation were never far from the edges, either.

Microsoft unveiled Microsoft Execution Containers. a policy-driven layer meant to make the OS more secure for things like OpenClaw on Windows. It also allows a companion app for OpenClaw to run contained on Windows PCs. Microsoft’s messaging around the goal was direct: it should prevent AI agents like OpenClaw from deleting all your files. “You can totally run OpenClaw inside your company now,” says OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger.

But the same week carried fresh legal pressure. Microsoft could be the next Big Tech antitrust target. New civil investigative demands indicate the Federal Trade Commission is looking at potentially exclusionary behavior related to Microsoft’s Azure cloud services. as well as Microsoft’s role in the AI industry. Customers have complained that Microsoft’s 2019 changes to its licensing terms made it significantly more costly to run Windows software on infrastructure outside of Microsoft’s own Azure cloud service. The US is not the only jurisdiction probing the issue: the European Commission. UK Competition and Markets Authority. and Japan Fair Trade Commission have been investigating Microsoft’s cloud services within the last year.

The rest of the Build week’s tech stream kept moving, even if it wasn’t all centered on Windows.

Microsoft announced that it unveiled its latest Majorana 2 quantum chip. built on a new material stack that promises useful quantum computing much sooner than previous work. Microsoft said switching from aluminum to lead improved the performance of qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing. Physicists were skeptical of Microsoft’s earlier Majorana 1 claims. and renewed questions are again being raised about Microsoft’s 2029 target for useful quantum computing.

Microsoft also introduced Microsoft Scout, an AI personal assistant built on OpenClaw. Like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Scout is described as an always-on assistant integrating into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams. Businesses can assign a virtual assistant to employees to help with organizing calendars, expense reporting, email drafts, and much more. Microsoft plans to release a preview version of Scout as a desktop app. with a plan to shift to a full Scout cloud service.

Gaming and consumer hardware weren’t spared, either.

Activision plans to drop support for PS4 and Xbox One consoles in Call of Duty: Warzone later this year. Players will need to upgrade to a PS5 or Xbox Series S/X console to keep playing once season 6 of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 concludes later this year. The timing comes as both Microsoft and Sony have increased console prices over the past year. with the PS5 and Xbox Series X now costing $150 more than their original $499 launch prices.

Microsoft also escalated a fight with a security researcher. Someone going by the name Nightmare Eclipse posted proof-of-concept exploit code. with some posts suggesting they’re a disgruntled former employee. Microsoft’s response angered parts of the cybersecurity community after the company suggested it plans to bring a criminal case against Nightmare Eclipse for failing to follow “proper coordination” in disclosing vulnerabilities.

And Microsoft 365 Copilot got a speed boost and a cleaner interface. The company launched a revamped version of Microsoft 365 Copilot last week, claiming the redesigned experience loads twice as fast. The redesign is rolling out across desktop and mobile. and it enables Copilot to present tools and controls based on a prompt rather than showing a bunch of options at once. Microsoft positioned the change as part of a broader effort to improve Copilot’s usefulness for businesses while also continuing to remove the AI assistant from parts of Windows.

In the middle of all that—new chips, new apps, new models, new legal risks—Build’s clearest message was the one Nadella chose to lead with. Windows wasn’t just present. It was dressed for a new era, backed by edge AI hardware that could shift how much work happens locally instead of in the cloud.

For developers who’ve watched Windows 11’s troubles drag on, that’s a lifeline. For Microsoft, it’s also a bet: if PCs can run the next wave of AI on-device, then Windows doesn’t fade into the background of someone else’s platform pitch.

It becomes the stage.

Microsoft Build Windows 11 Satya Nadella Pavan Davuluri Nvidia RTX Spark Surface RTX Spark Dev Kit Surface Laptop Ultra Project Solara Microsoft Execution Containers OpenClaw Microsoft Scout Microsoft 365 Copilot antitrust FTC Azure Call of Duty Warzone Majorana 2