Microsoft Build 2025: A Deep Dive into the ‘Agentic Web’ Revolutionizing AI, GitHub, and Windows
Microsoft's Build 2025 developer conference has just wrapped up, and the central theme was clear: AI agents are not just the future, they're the present. From GitHub to Windows 11, Microsoft is doubling down on its vision of an "open agentic web," where AI agents can autonomously perform tasks for users and organizations. This ambitious move promises to reshape how developers build applications and how users interact with technology.
One of the most significant announcements was the embrace of Anthropic's MCP (Model Collaboration Protocol) by both GitHub and Microsoft. MCP acts as a bridge, allowing AI models to seamlessly access data from various sources, including business tools, content repositories, and development environments. Imagine chatbots powered by real-time data, coding assistants proactively fixing bugs, and Windows apps exposing their functionalities directly to AI models. This is the power of MCP. According to Microsoft, developers can expose data through “MCP servers” and build “MCP clients,” fostering two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, such as chatbots.
Microsoft is not just supporting MCP; they're actively contributing to its development. Their security teams collaborated with Anthropic to create enhanced authorization protocols, ensuring that AI-powered apps connect to MCP servers securely using trusted sign-in methods. GitHub, in partnership with steering committee, contributed to designing design a registry service for MCP servers, which allows developers to implement public or private centralized repositories for MCP server entries and enable the discovery and management of various MCP implementations with their associated configurations. This commitment highlights Microsoft's dedication to fostering a secure and collaborative AI ecosystem.
The conference also showcased the rapid adoption of AI agents. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott revealed that the number of daily active users of Microsoft's AI agents had more than doubled in the past year. This growth underscores the increasing reliance on AI to automate tasks and boost productivity. Microsoft expects businesses to roll out 1.3 billion agents by 2028. The company showcased its Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, GitHub Copilot coding agent, and the ability for AI agents to connect directly with native Windows apps. Carl Brisco, CTO of ODP Corporation (Office Depot), cited the company's efforts using AI agents to improve customer outreach, specifically updating salespeople on when to contact specific customers.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, emphasized the company's commitment to building an “agentic web” at scale, offering tools such as the Azure SRE agent for site reliability engineering, embedded in GitHub Copilot. This agent acts as a reliable AI "peer," alleviating developers from tedious tasks like handling website issues in the middle of the night. Nadella calls the full coding agent built right into GitHub a "peer programmer".
The event also featured appearances from industry leaders like Sam Altman (OpenAI), Elon Musk (Tesla and xAI), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia), further solidifying Microsoft's position at the forefront of AI innovation. Altman highlighted Codex, OpenAI’s new agent designed to assist programmers with writing code, fixing bugs, and running tests; calling it "true software engineering task delegation" and "one of the biggest changes to programming that I've ever seen.". Microsoft also announced plans to integrate xAI's Grok models into Azure.
With its Build 2025 announcements, Microsoft has firmly planted its flag in the agentic AI landscape. The question now is, how will developers and businesses leverage these new tools and technologies to reshape the future of work and computing? And what ethical considerations will need to be addressed as AI agents become increasingly autonomous?
What are your thoughts on the rise of AI agents? Share your opinions and predictions in the comments below!
