Microsoft Unveils Vision for Smarter, Collaborative AI Agents at Build 2025
Microsoft closed its Build 2025 developer conference last night, spotlighting a bold new direction for AI development focused on collaboration and smarter memory systems. The company laid out its roadmap for AI "agents" — autonomous systems designed to handle tasks like debugging or managing workflows independently.
During the event at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters, CTO Kevin Scott shared that open collaboration is key to the future of AI. “We’re focused on helping spur the adoption of standards across the technology industry that will let agents from different makers collaborate,” said Scott. He compared this vision to how web pages revolutionised connectivity in the early days of the internet.
One standout initiative is Microsoft’s backing of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source standard developed by Anthropic. “It means that your imagination gets to drive what the agentic web becomes,” Scott added.
Another key focus was improving AI memory. To overcome the limitations of current transactional systems, Microsoft is developing structured retrieval augmentation, a technique that lets AI recall relevant past interactions efficiently. “This is a core part of how you train a biological brain,” Scott explained.