Microsoft's AI Futurist explains how he uses Copilot — and the real-world problems enterprises are solving with agents

Microsoft used its Build 2026 conference this week to push a clear message: agents are rapidly moving into production throughout enterprise systems, and the winning platform will be the one that gives them reliable context, governance, identity, memory — and secure access to enterprise data. The company announced Microsoft IQ as a context layer across GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio; Work IQ APIs coming June 16; Fabric IQ for structured business data; Foundry IQ for retrieval across enterprise knowledge and the live web; and Web IQ as a new agent-facing web search stack. Microsoft also introduced Scout , a personal work agent, and a whopping seven new in-house AI models in its growing MAI family across modalities and use cases, including MAI-Thinking-1. Those announcements sit directly in Marco Casalaina ’s lane. Casalaina is Microsoft’s VP Products, Core AI and AI Futurist . He leads Microsoft’s AI Futures team and previously led teams across Azure AI, including A

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