Microsoft just kicked off Build 2026 with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella and other company leaders. As expected, it was filled with announcements, ranging from new Surface hardware to an always-on personal assistant and updates across Microsoft's in-house AI models.

If you didn't watch the event live, you can catch up on all the latest news in the roundup below.

A mini Surface PC designed for AI development

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is geared toward developers who want to run local AI models on their device, serving as a substitute for Qualcomm's canceled dev kit. It comes equipped with Nvidia's new Arm-based Spark RTX chip and 128G …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft claimed last year that it had made a key breakthrough in quantum computing with Majorana 1, the company's first quantum processor. While physicists were immediately skeptical of Microsoft's claims, the software giant is announcing Majorana 2 today, the next generation of its topological quantum chip.

Majorana 2 contains qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today, that are 1,000 times more reliable, according to Microsoft. It's a milestone that helps make quantum computing more reliable, thanks to the use of a new material stack and some help from Microsoft Discovery's agen …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft announced a bunch of new in-house AI models at Build 2026, including a new "flagship" model: MAI-Thinking-1. It's an ambitious step into model development for Microsoft, which introduced its initial in-house models last year - before then, it had relied on OpenAI's models. The two companies recently renegotiated their deal to loosen ties.

According to Microsoft, MAI-Thinking-1 is a "medium-sized model" that "matches leading models" on "key" software engineering benchmarks. Microsoft says the company "trained it from the ground up on clean data, without distillation from third-party models."

As for other models announced today, t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Much like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is an always-on assistant that integrates into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to assign a virtual assistant to employees to help with organizing calendars, expense reporting, email drafts, and much more.

Unlike Copilot that lives inside Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Scout can see and do a lot more. "This is a personal assistant, it's the first real personal assistant we've offered customers," explains Omar Shahine, corporate vice president of Microsoft Scout, in an interview with The Verge. "I think it's …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft just announced "Project Solara," a new OS designed for gadgets that run AI agents, at Build 2026. The company is calling it "a new platform built from the ground up to power agent-driven experiences." It's built on Android, not Windows.

Microsoft demonstrated two concept Project Solara devices at Build today: Desk concept and badge concept. The desk concept is an Amazon Echo Show-like device that unlocks with facial recognition and provides access to AI agents.

The badge concept is a wearable, the type of badge you'd typically use to access a work building. It has a camera and a fingerprint scanner, which can wake an AI agent wi …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft only just announced a new Surface Laptop Ultra at the weekend, and it's now revealing a miniature Surface PC aimed at developers. The new Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is powered by Nvidia's new Arm-based RTX Spark chips, just like the Surface Laptop Ultra, and is optimized for sustained workloads and local AI tasks.

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box looks a little like the top of an Xbox Series X console, with an aluminum chassis that also doubles as a heatsink. It has a 100-watt thermal envelope, slightly more than the 45-watt-to-80-watt thermal envelopes for Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops. This miniature Surface PC also has 128GB of unifie …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft is kicking off its Build developer conference today with a promise of making Windows a trusted platform for development. As the company continues to focus on performance and reliability fixes for Windows 11, it's also creating a developer-optimized experience that bundles a lot of useful tools and apps and embraces Linux even further.

"We have optimized the Windows 11 experience for developers, bringing frequently used command line utilities, a familiar comfort shell, faster setup experience, a built-in way to create and interact with Linux containers on Windows and a new experimental Intelligent Terminal," explains Windows chief …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft’s annual developer conference is kicking off on June 2nd in San Francisco with the keynote presentation streaming live at 12:30PM ET / 9:30AM PT, and we will be following along here with everything as it’s announced. 

The Verge’s Tom Warren reports that we can expect to hear about new AI models and agentic OpenClaw-like tools, plus a Copilot “super app” to go along with some of the major changes to Windows 11 that have already started appearing. Microsoft just announced the new Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark, so there could be more Windows on ARM news in store. 

Follow along here for the latest news and updates.

• The new Surface mini PC is here.
• Build kicks off with Windows.
• Microsoft created the mini Surface dev box that Qualcomm couldn’t
• Microsoft’s new developer-optimized Windows embraces Linux even more
• Microsoft Build 2026 is about to begin.
• How to watch Microsoft’s Build 2026 conference
• Microsoft to unveil new AI models and Windows improvements at Build
• Microsoft’s big developer conference returns to San Francisco in June

Microsoft is kicking off its yearly Build developer conference in San Francisco today, sandwiched between the recent Google I/O and Apple's upcoming WWDC event. While tickets to attend Build in person are sold out, the conference is being streamed for free online, with CEO Satya Nadella opening with a keynote at 12:30PM ET / 9:30AM PT.

A cursory glance at the featured speakers and virtual sessions suggests that Build will predominantly focus on AI, which isn't surprising given this is a developer event in 2026. The keynote description also says that Nadella and Microsoft leaders will be sharing "how Microsoft is creating new opportunity for …

Read the full story at The Verge.