Microsoft is launching Windows 365 for Agents and Windows 365 Cloud PCs in public preview today. These new features are designed to help organizations scale AI-driven workflows securely across devices and cloud environments.

Windows 365 for Agents allows AI agents to run on secure, policy-controlled Cloud PCs streamed from the Microsoft Cloud. It’s designed for enterprise-scale AI adoption without compromising compliance or productivity. Researcher with Microsoft Copilot Studio computer use is the first Microsoft solution to use Cloud PCs running Linux, which enables automated website navigation and actions.

“Windows 365 for Agents will extend agentic capabilities to the Microsoft Cloud. Agent makers will have a trusted platform with modular UI controls, enterprise-grade security and flexibility to run on Windows or Linux. That means they will be able to build and deploy agents that open apps, process data and automate tasks on a Cloud PC,” Microsoft explained.

Microsoft is already testing Windows 365 for Agents with leading builders, including Manus AI, Fellou, Genspark, Simular, and TinyFish. The company is encouraging enterprise customers and developers to try Windows 365 for Agents by joining the waiting list on this page.

Windows 365 AI-enabled Cloud PCs

Microsoft has also announced the launch of new Windows 365 AI-enabled Cloud PCs in public preview. This new offering introduces Copilot+ PC-like experiences in the cloud, including improved Windows Search and Click to Do actions. It allows users to take actions directly on images, videos, tables, or text on-screen without switching between different apps.

Administrators can use Microsoft Security Copilot in Intune for performance and license optimization. It creates a seamless AI experience for both users and IT by running Microsoft 365 Copilot across Cloud PCs, Windows 365 for Agents, AI-enabled Cloud PCs, and Microsoft Intune.

Windows 365 productivity capabilities

Windows 365 Reserve, a new service that offers temporary Cloud PCs for business continuity during device loss or failure, is now generally available for organizations. It enables IT admins to quickly provide a Reserve Cloud PC pre-installed with organizational apps and settings/security policies through Microsoft Intune. With Windows 365 Cloud Apps, IT admins can give users access to just specific apps like Outlook or Word running on Windows 365 Cloud PCs, rather than providing them access to a full Cloud PC.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of User Experience Sync for Windows 365 Frontline customers. This feature is designed for shared mode deployments, allowing application settings and configurations to persist for each user across sessions. There is also a new migration API that simplifies moving from Azure Virtual Desktop or Azure VMs to Windows 365 Cloud PCs.

Updates for Windows 365 Link

Earlier this year, Microsoft released Windows 365 Link, which is the first Cloud PC hardware device designed to let users connect to cloud-based Windows 11 or Windows 10 virtual machines. In February 2026, Microsoft will expand the availability of this new offering to customers based in Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Singapore, and Spain.

Windows 365 Link is also getting a couple of new capabilities in early 2026. These include support for pairing Bluetooth devices during the out-of-box experience, support for tenant branding, and the ability for IT to recover a device using a bare metal recovery image. Microsoft is also working to add support for high-fidelity Webex and Zoom meetings on Cloud PCs.

Security features for Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop

Lastly, Microsoft is adding new security capabilities to Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop. The first new feature is external identities support, allowing organizations to use B2B login capabilities for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), contractor, or external user scenarios. The Windows Cloud I/O protection is now in public preview, which provides keyboard input and output protection for Cloud PCs to defend against keylogging malware and keystroke injection attacks.

According to a new study by sustainability analyst WSP USA, Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop can significantly reduce carbon emissions by extending the lifecycle of physical endpoints. This research leveraged a cloud-first approach to compare four business-as-usual scenarios.

The post Ignite 2025: Windows 365 for Agents, AI-Enabled Cloud PCs Launch in Preview appeared first on Petri IT Knowledgebase.

By now, most people would agree that AI is in the process of fundamentally changing how we work and solve problems. But this technology is still too often thought of as an addition to the work we do, rather than a fundamental part of it.

AI is not something that you can just plop on the end of a finished product, like a cherry on top of a sundae. Instead, using AI responsibly and wisely means thinking through how it can be used most effectively at every layer, from the datacenter that powers AI functionality to the people and organizations that are benefiting from its capabilities.

As we embark on another Microsoft Ignite, our company is empowering the complete lifecycle of AI, creating tools and solutions to drive the next generation of digital transformation for every organization and at every level of the work they do.

We envision a future where organizations become Frontier Firms by using AI for unlocking creativity and innovation, allowing the next great ideas to surface.

These are some of the major themes we are seeing with this year’s Ignite products and features:

AI in the flow of human ambition

At Microsoft, we believe that all great ideas start with human ambition, which can be accessed and unlocked using the capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot and an agent ecosystem.

Work IQ amplifies your IQ. It’s the intelligence layer that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to know how you work, with whom you work and the content you collaborate on. Built on your data, memory and inference, it connects to the rich company knowledge in your emails, files, meetings and chats, plus your preferences, habits, work patterns and relationships. It allows Copilot to make connections, unlock insights and predict the next best action based on native integrations, not a patchwork of third-party connectors. And now, you can tap into the expertise of Work IQ with APIs to build agents tuned to your unique workflows and business needs.

Work IQ also is powering many of the updates across Microsoft 365 Copilot announced at Ignite today.

Ubiquitous innovation and intelligence

In a Frontier Firm, there are makers in every room of the house. People on the frontlines are closest to the work problems that need to be solved. They can create agents to help them in their day-to-day work.

How do AI agents know what to do with your data? Foundry IQ and Fabric IQ help AI agents understand what users are doing, bridge the gap between raw data and real-world business meaning and find the context to make decisions.

Fabric IQ brings together analytical, time series and location-based data with your operational systems under one shared model tied to business meaning. This gives you a live, connected view of your business, so both people and AI can act in real time. If you are a customer who is already using Power BI for your business intelligence reporting, all of that pre-existing data modeling work will act as an immediate accelerant, giving your agents the unique context that defines how your business runs.

Foundry IQ takes this further with a fully managed knowledge system designed to ground AI agents over multiple data sources — including Microsoft 365 (Work IQ), Fabric IQ, custom applications and the web. This single endpoint for knowledge has routing and intelligence built in, enabling higher-quality reasoning, safer actions and more value for builders.

Microsoft Agent Factory is a program that brings these agent IQ layers together to help organizations build agents with confidence. With a single metered plan, customers can start building with IQ using Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio. They can deploy their agents anywhere, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, with no upfront licensing and provisioning required. Eligible organizations can also tap into hands-on support from top AI Forward Deployed Engineers and access tailored role-based training to boost AI fluency across teams.

Observability at every layer

By 2028, businesses are projected to have^[1] 1.3 billion AI agents automating workflows. Most organizations don’t yet have a way to observe, secure or govern them — if not governed, AI agents are the new shadow IT.

Microsoft Agent 365 enables you to observe, manage and secure your AI agents, whether the agents are created with Microsoft platforms, open-source frameworks or third-party platforms.

It equips them with many of the same apps and protections as people, tailored to agent needs, saving IT time and effort on integrating agents into business processes. It includes the Microsoft security solutions Defender, Entra, Purview and Foundry Control Plane to protect and govern agents, productivity tools including Microsoft 365 apps and Work IQ to help people work more efficiently and Microsoft 365 admin center to manage agents.

This is only a small selection of the many exciting features and updates we will be announcing at Ignite. As a reminder, you can view keynote sessions from Microsoft executives, including Judson Althoff, Scott Guthrie, Charles Lamanna, Asha Sharma and Ryan Roslansky, live or on-demand.

Plus, you can get more on all these announcements by exploring the Book of News, the official compendium of all today’s news.

Frank X. Shaw is responsible for defining and managing communications strategies worldwide, company-wide storytelling, product PR, media and analyst relations, executive communications, employee communications, global agency management and military affairs.

Related:

Partners leading the AI transformation: Microsoft Ignite 2025 recap

[1] IDC Info Snapshot, sponsored by Microsoft, 1.3 Billion AI Agents by 2028, May 2025 #US53361825

The post From idea to deployment: The complete lifecycle of AI on display at Ignite 2025 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Anthropic to scale Claude on Azure
Anthropic to adopt NVIDIA architecture
NVIDIA and Microsoft to invest in Anthropic

Today Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic announced new strategic partnerships. Anthropic is scaling its rapidly-growing Claude AI model on Microsoft Azure, powered by NVIDIA, which will broaden access to Claude and provide Azure enterprise customers with expanded model choice and new capabilities. Anthropic has committed to purchase $30 billion of Azure compute capacity and to contract additional compute capacity up to one gigawatt.  

For the first time, NVIDIA and Anthropic are establishing a deep technology partnership to support Anthropic’s future growth. Anthropic and NVIDIA will collaborate on design and engineering, with the goal of optimizing Anthropic models for the best possible performance, efficiency, and TCO, and optimizing future NVIDIA architectures for Anthropic workloads. Anthropic’s compute commitment will initially be up to one gigawatt of compute capacity with NVIDIA Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems. 

Microsoft and Anthropic are also expanding their existing partnership to provide broader access to Claude for businesses. Customers of Microsoft Foundry will be able to access Anthropic’s frontier Claude models including Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, and Claude Haiku 4.5. This partnership will make Claude the only frontier model available on all three of the world’s most prominent cloud services. Azure customers will gain expanded choice in models and access to Claude-specific capabilities.  

Microsoft has also committed to continuing access for Claude across Microsoft’s Copilot family, including GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Copilot Studio. 

As part of the partnership, NVIDIA and Microsoft are committing to invest up to $10 billion and up to $5 billion respectively in Anthropic.  

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang gathered to discuss the new partnerships:

The post Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic announce strategic partnerships appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.