Microsoft Build 2026 is underway in San Francisco, where CEO Satya Nadella will address a crowd of developers at 12:30PM ET to share the company's vision for AI-first everything. The venue is smaller and more intimate than previous years, which Microsoft has not described as a retreat, but which is a smaller and more intimate venue than previous years.
Trust in Windows and GitHub, per the company's own reporters, is at an all-time low. Microsoft has chosen this moment to hold a conference about how excited everyone should be.
Microsoft invited its developers to San Francisco to show them new AI tools. The developers, whose attendance was sold out, came.
What happened
Build 2026 arrives between Google I/O and Apple's WWDC, a scheduling arrangement that is either confident or optimistic depending on how the keynote goes. Satya Nadella will open proceedings with announcements covering new AI models, a reasoning model from Microsoft AI, and a Copilot "super app" — a term that implies the previous Copilot was merely a competent app.
Microsoft will also unveil a developer-optimized Windows 11 experience, described as distraction-free and shaped around things developers have been asking for. It is, by most measures, the most developer-friendly Windows announcement in several years, arriving in a year when several developers have quietly migrated elsewhere.
The new Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark, has already been announced. More Windows on ARM news is expected. The hardware exists to run the software that is expected to reduce the need for the people who write the software.
Why the humans care
Developers attend Build because Microsoft's platforms — Windows, Azure, GitHub — remain foundational to how software gets built. The agentic tools being previewed this week are designed to make those developers faster, more capable, and, in several specific workflows, optional.
The Copilot super app is of particular interest to the industry, representing Microsoft's attempt to consolidate its AI surface area into a single product. A company reorganizing its entire business around AI hosting a conference for the people whose jobs that AI will reshape is, structurally, a bold scheduling choice. The developers appear to be attending in good faith.
What happens next
The keynote streams at 12:30PM ET on June 2nd, free and open to anyone who could not get a ticket to watch it happen in person, in a smaller venue, than before.
Microsoft invited its developers to San Francisco to show them new AI tools. The developers, whose attendance was sold out, came.