The reason is structural: today’s identity systems were designed to verify credentials, sessions, and devices. Not the humans behind them.

For identity and security professionals, the challenge is closing the gap between “verified credential” and “verified human.” The answer lies in human identity assurance.

The flaw Zero Trust left unaddressed

Zero Trust modernised how organisations verify users outside of the company perimeter. But it inherited its own assumption: if the credential is valid, the human is valid. The validity of a token or password says nothing about whether the human presenting it today is the same human who originally established it.

That gap has always been exploitable, but AI has industrialised it – enabling attackers to build convincing phishing campaigns, clone voices, and deploy deepfake video at a quality and scale not previously possible.

The consequences are well documented. Operatives from OFAC-sanctioned nations infiltrated over 300 companies using deepfake filters to pass remote video interviews. Scattered Spider used help desk social engineering to cause significant disruption across multiple major enterprises, linked to over 120 intrusions and $115 million in ransoms. A single deepfake video call cost Arup $25 million in fraudulent transfers. In each case, the identity controls performed as designed, but failed to verify the human.

Introducing human identity assurance

Closing the gap between “verified credential” and “verified human” requires a different kind of assurance: one that confirms a real person is genuinely present.

iProov adds this capability to the existing identity stack through advanced biometrics. The high-assurance biometric technology confirms genuine human presence in real time. Powered by award-winning liveness detection and patented Flashmark® technology, it delivers unmatched protection against deepfakes, injection attacks, and presentation attacks.

Unlike knowledge or possession factors, the biometric inherence factor cannot be lost, stolen, or shared. This provides a definitive defence against phishing while remaining entirely device-independent – ensuring full lifecycle coverage where device-bound controls typically break down. By anchoring identity to a high-assurance inherence factor, organizations effectively mitigate third-party credential compromise and secure the supply chain – a vast, high-risk attack surface where visibility and control have traditionally been the most difficult to maintain.

Closing workforce identity lifecycle gaps

This capability applies across the critical moments in the workforce identity lifecycle where credential-based controls are most exposed.

• Remote hiring and onboarding: Confirm the person on screen is genuine before credentials are issued, stopping deepfake candidates and synthetic identities before day one.
• Daily access and shared devices: Deliver seamless, accountable access across devices and accounts without passwords, tokens, or companion apps.
• Step-up and privileged actions: Confirm genuine human presence before high-risk actions and sensitive approvals.
• Account recovery: Re-anchor identity to a verified human from any device without the help desk.

This works in conjunction with existing IAM, IGA, and PAM platforms – strengthening assurance where credential-based controls alone are not enough.

iProov partners with Microsoft to deliver secure identity verification

Combining iProov with Microsoft enhances digital identity solutions with cutting-edge biometric authentication. By integrating iProov’s patented facial verification technology into Microsoft’s solution and ecosystem, organizations can offer seamless, secure user experiences while combating identity fraud. This empowers businesses and governments to protect sensitive data and ensure trust in critical digital interactions. Together, iProov and Microsoft are setting new standards for security and convenience in the digital age.

Ready to see how this fits your environment? Explore iProov for Microsoft customers.

The post Beyond credentials. Verifying the human. appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Across industries, teams are feeling the same pressure: move faster, work smarter, and unlock the value of AI without adding complexity or risk. That’s where the Microsoft Marketplace comes in.

Through Marketplace, customers can easily discover, try, and buy cutting-edge AI solutions from a global ecosystem of trusted Microsoft partners, all within a single, familiar procurement route.

This means:

• Simplified purchasing using existing Microsoft agreements
• Faster deployment of enterprise-ready AI solutions
• Built-in governance, security, and compliance

For many organisations, this represents a smarter way to adopt technology, shifting from building everything in-house to buying proven, scalable solutions that deliver immediate value. It’s a shift from experimentation to execution, accelerating transformation while reducing operational friction.

A New Wave of AI-Native Innovation

As part of the Agentic Launchpad in collaboration with NVIDIA and WeTransact, Microsoft has been working with a cohort of leading AI-native companies building the next generation of intelligent, autonomous systems.

These companies aren’t just imagining the future of AI; they’re engineering it with solutions built to solve today’s most pressing operational challenges.

In this blog, we’re highlighting a selection of these solutions, now available on Microsoft Marketplace, and exploring how they can help organisations unlock real business impact today.

AI-Native Solutions Now Available on Microsoft Marketplace:

Convertr governs B2B contact data at enterprise scale. Our Launchpad build makes that governance accessible via MCP, allowing AI agents to run contact data through Convertr’s quality and compliance rules before writing to production systems, and bringing automated governance directly into the AI workflow.

Cronofy’s temporal infrastructure empowers frontier firms to eliminate time as a barrier to real-world agentic outcomes. Its enterpriseproven scheduling grid unifies availability and coordinates the full scheduling lifecycle across Teams, Copilot, and enterprise systems of record, turning time into a strategic asset.

CultureAI is an AI Usage Control platform that gives organisations visibility and security control over how employees use AI tools. Its agentic roadmap introduces autonomous agents that detect new risks, apply policy automatically and create a dynamic, scalable foundation for secure enterprise AI adoption.

Dayshape is an AI-powered scheduling solution that increases profitability at large professional services firms. Dayshape’s agents integrate into Copilot and Teams, giving senior leaders instant access to key data insights around the availability of their people, and the profitability and performance of their projects.

Gravitee is a unified platform that helps manage APIs, event streams and agentic AI systems across every gateway and broker. With enterprise-grade security, a four-times-faster API gateway, and unlimited events and API calls for one price, Gravitee leads modern API management and is recognised as a 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Leader.

InstaDeep, a leader in Decision-Making AI, brings a proven track record of deploying AI agents for high-value industrial challenges. Ideally suited for the Agentic Launchpad, our DeepForge platform distills this expertise into a scalable product factory. By leveraging Deep Reinforcement Learning, it empowers enterprises to build AI systems that deliver real business impact.

Idox tackles a widespread problem across sectors where vital map data is trapped in document images, restricting GIS adoption. By replacing time-intensive, specialist georeferencing with AI-driven automation, Idox Geospatial rapidly unlocks previously inaccessible spatial data at scale, turning static documents into actionable intelligence.

iProov’s Human-in-the-Loop consent gate verifies human intent and provides permissioning to any AI Agent undertaking high-risk autonomous actions in Azure. Enforced by iProov’s liveness backed biometrics, the approval is both irrefutable and unforgeable, ensuring safety remains at the core of autonomous operations.

Palindrome is an AI-native platform for wealth management. Its intelligent agents automate complex workflows, transform fragmented data into compliant insight, and expand front office capacity, helping leading wealth managers and private banks operate more efficiently, grow faster, and deliver better client outcomes.

PhysicsX is an AI-native engineering company on a mission to accelerate industrial innovation and redefine the future of engineering and manufacturing. Its platform delivers deep physics AI enablement across the entire engineering lifecycle, shifting teams from slow, computeheavy simulation to realtime AI inference. This compresses development cycles, reduces cost, and unlocks step-change performance across sectors including aerospace, automotive, semiconductors, energy, and materials.

Whitespace’s Operational Learning is an AI-native enterprise application that transforms reports, reviews and operational data into structured insight. Embedded within workflows, it identifies patterns, lessons learned and improvement opportunities in real time, helping organisations strengthen performance and continuously improve operations.

Wordsmith is an AI-native legal enablement platform for in-house teams. It automates contract review, enables self-service legal support, and integrates with Microsoft365, email, and business tools.

Xceptor is the AI-powered data automation platform for financial markets, enabling institutions to operate with accurate, trusted and auditable data across the trade lifecycle. Its platform extracts, ingests, validates, and transforms any data, in any format, from any source, providing firms with complete control and transparency over their data, while reducing risk and enhancing operational efficiency.

Start your AI transformation journey today

The shift to AI-native software is already underway, and the organisations seeing the most impact are those moving early.

The solutions featured here are built for real-world deployment, helping teams move faster and unlock new levels of efficiency.

Through the Agentic Launchpad, Microsoft is bringing this next generation of AI innovation to market, making it easier than ever for customers to put it to work with confidence.

Your AI transformation can start now, and scale faster than you think. Visit the Microsoft Marketplace today.

The post Accelerate Your AI Transformation with AI-Native Solutions on Microsoft Marketplace  appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Built on Microsoft’s continued investment in the UK’s AI infrastructure and innovation, it supports companies developing intelligent, autonomous and next-generation AI systems. Through deep technical enablement, access to advanced AI capabilities and go-to-market acceleration, the programme helps start-ups and scale-ups bring transformative ideas to life and reach customers faster. 

With over 500 applications received, competition was exceptionally strong. Our selected companies represent some of the most compelling and forward-thinking innovation emerging from the AI ecosystem in the UK and Ireland.  

Meet the 13 companies driving the future of agentic AI 

Convertr is a trusted identity and contact data governance layer for the enterprise. The solution validates, enriches and routes every human-linked record across marketing, sales, IT, compliance and data teams. Specialised agents automate campaign set-up, rules configuration, QA, reporting and support. Turning natural language into governed, AI-ready enterprise workflows. 

 Cronofy makes scheduling and running effective meetings easy, whatever their complexity. Teams and enterprises use Cronofy to empower both humans and AI agents to schedule, reschedule, transcribe and summarise internal and external meetings. This hybrid agentic approach, with complete human control over calendars, drives unprecedented adoption and efficiency gains. 

CultureAI is an AI Usage Control platform that gives organisations visibility and security control over how employees use AI tools. Its agentic roadmap introduces agents that detect new risks, apply policy automatically and create a dynamic, scalable foundation for secure enterprise AI adoption.   

Dayshape is an AI-powered resource planning platform trusted by world-leading professional services firms. It helps grow revenue, optimise margins and automate complex staffing. By evaluating hundreds of thousands of scheduling scenarios per second, Dayshape delivers clarity and confidence. Ensuring the right teams are aligned and powering future-focused, profitable decisions. 

Gravitee is a unified platform that helps manage APIs, event streams and agentic AI systems across every gateway and broker. With enterprise-grade security, a four-times-faster API gateway, and unlimited events and API calls for one price, Gravitee leads modern API management and is recognised as a 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Leader. 

InstaDeep is a global leader in Decision-Making AI, with a proven track-record of deploying AI agents for high-value industrial challenges. Ideally suited for the Agentic Launchpad, the DeepForge platform distils this expertise into a scalable product factory. By leveraging Deep Reinforcement Learning, it empowers enterprises to build AI systems that deliver real business impact. 

iProov science-based biometric solutions provide the trust anchor for agentic AI by binding autonomous agents to the real identities of verified humans. By doing so, iProov ensures secure delegation and eliminates impersonation. Its award-winning liveness technology and iSOC offer unmatched resilience against deepfakes and generative AI threats, while ensuring effortless, scalable user experiences.

Palindrome powers the world’s leading wealth firms to make decisions sharper, faster and grounded in strong compliance standards. Deeply integrated into existing systems, it streamlines operations, expands front-office capacity and elevates client outcomes. Firms representing over $100 billion in assets trust Palindrome to run end-to-end client and compliance workflows at scale. 

PhysicsX is a physical AI company on a mission to accelerate industrial innovation and redefine the future of engineering and manufacturing. The PhysicsX platform empowers global organisations across advanced industries, including aerospace and defence, automotive, semiconductors, materials, and energy and renewables. Helping them rapidly develop, deploy and scale a new generation of AI tools across the full product development lifecycle.  

Raft AI is redefining global logistics. Deploying intelligent agents that can reason, plan and execute complex workflows autonomously, while keeping humans in the loop at key control points. Trusted by 60+ forwarders, Raft unifies fragmented systems, processes over 5 billion data points annually, and scales infinitely without extra headcount. 

Whitespace is the UK’s sovereign AI company. Its flagship platform, Collective, is a secure operating system that enables rapid development and deployment of governed AI across cloud, edge and fully offline environments. Whitespace delivers mission-ready solutions for Defence, National Security and other high-risk sectors that require control, audit and operational performance. 

Wordsmith AI is a legal enablement platform for in-house teams, combining AI contract review, customisable playbooks and structured repositories. The platform integrates seamlessly with tools such as Microsoft Word, SharePoint, Notion, and 7,000+ apps via Zapier, MCP, and API. By eliminating backlogs and uncovering missed revenue opportunities, Wordsmith scales legal capacity and enables secure business-wide self-service – transforming the legal function into a proactive revenue enabler. 

Xceptor is a global leader in data automation for capital markets. Trusted by over 125 clients across 60 countries, it empowers organisations to control their data, streamline processes with AI and minimise risk. Xceptor’s Data Automation Platform unlocks efficiency across the trade lifecycle. In addition, it underpins purpose-built solutions, including for Tax, Reconciliations and Post-Trade Operations.   

Advancing AI innovation across the UK 

These companies are using AI to address real-world challenges and create new value for customers across a range of sectors. Collectively, their innovation highlights the continued momentum of the AI economy across the UK and Ireland. 

In the months ahead, they will benefit from technical guidance, cloud resources and go-to-market support. In addition, they’ll gain access to new customer pathways through Microsoft’s ecosystem and marketplace channels. 

Learn more about partnering with us

Explore programmes and resources that can help you build, innovate and scale your AI solutions with Microsoft and our partners. 

• Register for our upcoming webinar, Build AI Agents with Microsoft, and learn how intelligent agents are transforming operations – and how software companies can build, scale, and monetise in this new era. 

• Visit Microsoft for Startups – access cutting-edge AI models and developer tools to build faster on Azure, backed by Microsoft’s global customer network, enterprise-grade security and privacy you can trust. 

• Join Microsoft ISV Success – innovate and go to market faster, with exclusive benefits across cloud credits, developer tools and more.  

• Join NVIDIA Inception for Startups – a free programme designed to help startups evolve faster through cutting-edge technology, opportunities to connect with venture capitalists and access to the latest technical resources from NVIDIA. Learn more and apply for NVIDIA Inception for Startups. 

As AI continues to transform industries, these 13 companies are helping shape what comes next. We’re proud to support their journey through the Agentic Launchpad and look forward to seeing the impact they create in the months ahead. 

About the author 

Alison works within Microsoft  UK & Ireland Senior Leadership Team. She leads the Enterprise Partner business, working with global systems integrators, advisories and strategic software partners to turn AI ambition into measurable value – shaping strategy, strengthening governance and building the skills and culture needed to scale responsibly. Collaborative and inclusive, she is known for bringing diverse teams together to spark new ideas and deliver results.  

Previously a senior executive at IBM (including VP for the UK&I Technology Ecosystem, Chief Digital Officer, and Director of Customer Success), Alison brings a global, partner-first perspective. She is passionate about diversity in tech and champions practical pathways into AI for all.

The post Introducing the AI innovators selected for the Agentic Launchpad appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

When supported by the right technology, resource management becomes far more than an operational process. It enables leaders to align skills, capacity and demand with confidence, driving better planning and performance.

Dayshape’s AI-powered resource management platform delivers this capability. By unifying data, forecasting and planning, it provides insights into capacity, availability and demand. It also enables smarter decisions, better margin control and confident growth planning. 

Rather than tracking past schedules, Dayshape enables resources to be managed as a connected ecosystem that predicts future project performance. Serving clients worldwide from operations in the UK and US, it is helping organisations plan, allocate and optimise with precision. 

Moving from static schedules to intelligent resource planning

Dayshape’s AI-powered platform evaluates tens of thousands of scheduling scenarios per second, identifying team configurations that balance skills, preferences and availability, both now and into the future. Managers can select the level of automation they need to maintain governance and control while improving speed and precision. 

This approach allows firms to: 

• Plan with confidence – forecasting demand, spotting pressure points early and gaining the foresight to confidently take on more profitable work. 
• Automate with control – accelerating resourcing decisions while maintaining oversight and final approval.
• Optimise utilisation – aligning people and projects across dispersed teams to help maximise revenue and margins.

Customers using Dayshape’s platform to handle complex, time-consuming tasks report rapid ROI and hours saved each day. Predictive planning confers a strategic edge, enabling resourcing teams to focus on higher value work such as improving utilisation and margins.

Connecting data to deliver the full picture

For many large firms, planning data sits in silos, limiting visibility into how work, people and financial performance connect. Integrating these perspectives provides the foundation for more confident, evidence-based decisions.

Dayshape’s platform creates a critical link between operational and financial information that organisations have traditionally lacked. It offers a unified view of how projects are staffed, how utilisation affects margins and how future demand will influence capacity.

Every project has a live financial forecast that updates automatically as the project progresses. This gives leaders a real-time view of profitability and capacity, so they can act before performance gaps appear. 

With this level of insight: 

• C-level executives can make vital budget decisions with confidence that they will optimise margin and grow revenue. 
• Resource directors can model scenarios before committing resources, and help plan talent pipelines against future demand.
• Resource managers can balance workloads while maintaining utilisation targets.
• Individuals gain clearer insight into their schedules and growth opportunities. 

The result is a single source of truth that makes planning a continuous, collaborative discipline that protects margins, improves predictability and strengthens control. 

Leveraging the power of Microsoft partnership

Microsoft isn’t just powering Dayshape with Microsoft Azure scalable cloud infrastructure – it’s also enabling the intelligent automation and reliability that professional services firms demand. By leveraging Microsoft’s AI-powered cloud stack, Dayshape enhances its capabilities in resource optimisation, forecasting and decision support, all while maintaining enterprise-grade trust and governance. 

Dayshape’s partnership with Microsoft signals a future where AI-powered resource management is seamlessly embedded into the operational fabric of every professional services organisation. 

Building for enterprise scale and retention 

As organisations grow, it can be challenging to maintain quality and consistency without losing flexibility and control. That’s why it’s important that resource management technology can handle the volume, complexity and governance requirements of enterprise-scale operations. 

Dayshape is designed for precisely this scale. It integrates with existing systems and processes, providing reliable performance across regions, currencies and time zones. As cloud-powered software, it also meets enterprise standards for security and compliance.

Equally important is the human side of resource management. Dayshape factors in skills, preferences and development goals to create assignments that balance business priorities with individual growth.

By aligning people’s aspirations with project needs, teams stay motivated and the strain of excessive utilisation is reduced. 

Championing a new way of working

Adopting intelligent resource management can trigger a cultural shift as much as a technical one.

When data about people, projects and performance sits in a single environment, planning becomes a shared, strategic activity rather than a series of departmental handovers. Finance, HR and delivery teams can collaborate more easily, working from a shared picture of capacity and priorities. 

This unified approach brings structure to what can otherwise be an uncertain process. It helps turn resource management into a continuous activity, supporting the organisation’s rhythm rather than reacting to it.

In addition, it creates stability and predictability over time, even as the scale and variety of work increase. 

As firms grow, alignment becomes increasingly critical. Dayshape provides that alignment – combining analytics, automation and human insight to help enterprises plan with clarity, adapt with agility and sustain performance as the nature of work evolves. 

This article is authored by a guest contributor. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent Microsoft’s position.

Find out more

Learn more about Dayshape strategic resource management

About the author 

Matt is CEO at Dayshape, joining the company in 2024 to accelerate its vision of defining the future of AI-powered enterprise resource management through intelligent automation.

With a career spanning more than 20 years in technology and leadership roles at Vodafone, Telefónica O2, and Mobile Interactive Group, he has focused on building and scaling SaaS businesses that help organisations work smarter.

Under Matt’s leadership, Dayshape continues to expand globally, helping professional-services firms plan more effectively and deliver better outcomes for their people and clients. 

The post Dayshape AI-powered resource management: transforming overhead into impact appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Every agent – whether a copilot, workflow assistant or autonomous system – relies on APIs and events to exchange information to act safely. However, managing that growing web of application-to-application (A2A) communication is now one of the biggest challenges in enterprise architecture.

Recognised as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for API Management, Gravitee now brings its expertise in API governance and security to the agentic era. Gravitee API management helps organisations orchestrate and secure interactions between APIs, events and AI agents.

Together, Gravitee and Microsoft help organisations co-ordinate and protect the interactions that enable intelligent systems.

Gravitee API management and the evolution of connectivity

Gravitee has long supported global enterprises in managing their APIs and event streams. As organisations begin to deploy intelligent agents, those same foundations are helping them extend API management principles into the world of AI.

For example, instead of manually coding integrations, developers are designing environments where agents can discover, call and combine APIs autonomously. Each agent has defined permissions, costs and data boundaries.

Without proper governance, however, “agent sprawl” can quickly emerge. This can introduce operational risk, compliance gaps and unpredictable cost.

These risks aren’t hypothetical. Gravitee research conducted in October 2025 shows that 82% of companies have encountered scenarios where agent interaction caused issues, such as data exposure or unapproved system actions. Therefore, robust control must be built in from day one.

The focus on safe, transparent agent operations aligns with Microsoft’s responsible AI principles, which emphasise accountability, reliability and human oversight. Moreover, Gravitee’s Agent Mesh helps operationalise those principles – unifying the management of APIs, events and agents to give teams full visibility, policy control and security across all interactions.

Governing AI agents with Gravitee API management

Unlike traditional software, AI agents are designed to interpret intent, manage API calls and respond dynamically to user context. This adaptability also demands a new level of control. With Gravitee on Microsoft Azure, enterprises can:

• Apply governance and rate-limiting policies across APIs and events
• Monitor real-time interactions between agents and enterprise systems
• Standardise communication through open protocols, such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

In short, by establishing guardrails and observability, enterprises can ensure agents operate responsibly – while continuing to innovate.

Built for the enterprise, powered by Azure

Microsoft’s partnership with Gravitee delivers enterprise-grade scalability and trust. As a result, the Gravitee platform, deployed on Microsoft Azure, enables customers to build secure, production-ready agent ecosystems.

In addition, organisations can deploy Gravitee from the Azure Marketplace with a single click. This provides simplified procurement, unified billing and built-in compliance. Explore Gravitee on Azure Marketplace.

Building the future together

As enterprises move from AI experimentation to production, success will depend on effectively connecting, governing and evolving agent ecosystems.

Microsoft and Gravitee are working together to make that possible. They combine Gravitee’s deep expertise in API and event control with Azure’s global reach and secure AI infrastructure.

Ultimately, the result is a platform that transforms connectivity into a competitive advantage. Every API, event and agent interaction is secure, observable and ready to scale responsibly.

This article is authored by a guest contributor. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent Microsoft’s position.

Find out more

Learn more about Gravitee on the Azure Marketplace

Read the blog: Transforming insurance with AI-powered autonomous agents

About the author

Since taking over as CEO in 2020, Rory has led Gravitee through a period of extraordinary growth, increasing revenue by a factor of twenty-five and positioning the company as a recognised leader by Gartner. Over this period, Gravitee has pioneered innovations like the Gravitee Event Stream Gateway and Gravitee Agent Mesh, applying the principles of API management to AI agent governance and control.

Rory brings a strong background in scaling SaaS businesses and a customer-first, execution-focused leadership style. A regular speaker and thought leader on AI in enterprise tech, high-growth leadership and API strategy, he is known for building high-performing, mission-driven teams that deliver sustainable success.

The post Building the connective tissue for the agentic era with Gravitee appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This leaves financial institutions at a crossroads. Traditional reliance on manual tracking and fragmented systems is no longer sustainable.  

For compliance and risk teams, the challenge isn’t just volume – it’s velocity. The ability to interpret, act and align internal policies with external mandates in real time is now a competitive differentiator. 

It’s time to bring in intelligent automation – and this is where compliance software provider CUBE, with its AI-powered regulatory intelligence platform, is leading the charge. 

AI as a strategic enabler, not just a tool 

AI is moving beyond simple support in compliance and risk to become a critical enabler. For example, CUBE’s Automated Regulatory Intelligence (ARI) engine, powered by RegBrain, transforms regulatory content into structured, contextualised intelligence.

Far surpassing keyword matching or robotic parsing, the CUBE solution takes account of nuance, intent and jurisdictional relevance – at scale. 

Advanced AI regulatory intelligence

The CUBE platform combines advanced technology and human expertise to deliver smarter regulatory insights. 

• Semantic AI: goes beyond surface-level text to interpret regulatory meaning and map it to business obligations. 

• Global coverage: monitors 10,000 issuing bodies across 750 jurisdictions, enabling end-to-end oversight. 

• Dynamic mapping: aligns external regulations with internal controls, policies and frameworks in real time. 

• “Human in the loop” assurance: 250 in-house subject matter experts ensure precision and trust. 

From compliance burden to strategic insight 

CUBE’s RegPlatform^TM unlocks opportunity as well as reducing risk. By surfacing regulatory trends and emerging themes, the platform empowers leadership teams to anticipate change rather than react to it.

This shift from defensive compliance to proactive governance is where true transformation lies. 

Building the future through ecosystem thinking 

Since the start of 2024, CUBE has more than doubled revenue and headcount, completing landmark acquisitions, including Acin in June 2025 and the Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence and Oden businesses in January 2025. The company has also launched its new global HQ and AI Centre of Excellence in London. 

Acquiring Acin led to the creation of the industry’s first unified data-driven platform to combine regulatory compliance and operational risk management. This is also the foundation of a global industry collaboration initiative, led by CUBE and supported by Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, JPMorganChase and Lloyds Banking Group.  

The goal of this partnership is to raise standards, reduce duplication, accelerate responsible AI innovation and deliver better outcomes across the ecosystem. 

Beyond finance: a cross-industry imperative 

While CUBE’s core is financial services, its impact is expanding. Financially regulated industries such as insurance, healthcare, energy and supervisory boards are now leveraging CUBE’s RegPlatform to navigate sector-specific regulations with confidence.

Regulatory intelligence is no longer a niche function but a universal need. 

Built on trusted Microsoft AI 

Microsoft isn’t just providing Azure Cloud horsepower for CUBE’s solution. The Microsoft AI technology stack further delivers the depth and reliability that compliance demands. From natural language understanding to responsible AI governance, the company’s technical expertise ensures that platforms like CUBE can scale without compromising trust. 

Microsoft’s strategic partnership with CUBE heralds a future in which AI-powered regulatory intelligence is embedded into every organisation. 

Thought leadership in action 

Beyond helping organisations respond to regulatory change, CUBE is helping shape the future of compliance and risk. With advanced AI, global scale and deep subject-matter expertise, CUBE is delivering the tools to help regulated industries stay compliant, manage risk and stay ahead of regulatory headwinds.

This is what compliance and risk means in the digital age – no longer a cost centre, but a source of resilience, reputation and readiness. 

Find out more

Read the blog: Hyperscale data and GenAI: transforming business intelligence for better decisions

Read the blog: AI and cloud innovation: shaping the future of LegalTech for software development companies 

Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager

About the author

Ben is the Founder and CEO of CUBE Ltd, which he established in 2011 to transform regulatory compliance through AI. Previously at Misys (now part of Finastra), Ben recognised how unstructured data could help reshape the future of compliance.

Today, CUBE is the first automated service to track regulatory updates from every source worldwide, helping organisations standardise and map changes to stay compliant. CUBE serves over 1,000 clients in more than 150 countries, and Ben was named Entrepreneur of the Year at GP Bullhound’s Allstars 2024.

This article is authored by a guest contributor. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent Microsoft’s position.

The post Rethinking regulation: how CUBE is redefining RegTech with AI  appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

While AI is rapidly reshaping how we work, many sellers still spend too much of their day on manual tasks. Typical examples include updating CRM records, writing follow-up emails and preparing for meetings. 

That’s exactly where Microsoft sales agents come in.

By helping you focus on what matters most – building relationships and closing deals – our AI-powered assistants take care of the repetitive, time-consuming work behind the scenes.

What are sales agents?  

Sales agents are intelligent, role-based AI assistants that work across Microsoft 365 and your CRM, whether that’s Dynamics 365 or Salesforce. For example, Microsoft Sales Agent and Sales Chat can support and empower sellers in different ways, including:  

• Drafting personalised emails and meeting summaries  

• Qualifying leads and prioritising your pipeline  

• Keeping CRM records up to date automatically  

• Surfacing insights and next-best actions in real time  

What’s more, these solutions aren’t just assistive. They can work autonomously, engaging leads 24/7 and passing warm opportunities to you when it’s time to close. For lower-impact leads, they can even complete a sale. 

With Copilot, agents and human expertise working hand in hand, sales teams are empowered to unlock new opportunities for profitability and growth. 

Reimagine your sales day: watch role-based demos 

To show how AI-powered agents can transform your workflow, we’ve created five bite-size videos, including “day in the life” pieces focusing on specific sales roles.

Why not start with the demo that fits your role and see what’s possible?

🎥 Demo 1: How to Empower Your Sales Team with AI Agents

An introduction to how Sales Agent and Sales Chat work together to streamline sales operations. 

🎥 Demo 2: A Day in the Life of a Relationship Manager with AI

See how Sales Chat helps you stay informed and personalise customer engagement. 

🎥 Demo 3: A Day in the Life of a Velocity Seller with AI

Watch how Sales Agent helps you qualify leads, automate outreach, and stay focused on high-value deals. 

🎥 Demo 4: A Day in the Life of a Sales Leader with AI

Discover how Sales Research Agent helps you optimise team performance and drive revenue. 

🎥 Demo 5: Get Started with Sales Agents

Explore the benefits of enhancing sales productivity and efficiency today by integrating AI-powered platforms into your workflow.

Dive deeper into seamless, agent-supported sales journeys

To explore more, watch Microsoft Discovery Hour: The Autonomous Customer Experience on-demand, which includes highlights from our Customer Experience Reimagined UK event. You’ll hear from product and strategy experts how sales agents are already helping organisations deliver more personalised, proactive and scalable customer experiences. 

Access sales agents today 

Our agents are now generally available. To access them in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, just follow these steps:

• Open your Microsoft 365 Copilot app. 
• Navigate to Chat > Agents. 
• Use the dropdown to browse pre-installed agents or select All agents  to explore the Agent Store. 
• Select the Sales Agent, then click Add or Open.
• You can now interact with the agent using prompts in the Message Copilot box. 

Remember, these solutions work with both Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. That means you can nurture and close deals without even opening your CRM. You can also fine-tune them to connect to all your business data, ensuring accurate, actionable responses.  

It’s selling, made seamless – so you can spend more time with customers, and less time with systems.

Find out more

Read Microsoft’s announcement about sales agents 

Watch Microsoft Discovery Hour: The Autonomous Customer Experience

Explore the sales agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat 

Read the e-book: AI + CX: Your guide to marketing, sales and service transformation

Watch the videos featured in this blog:

• Demo 1: How to Empower Your Sales Team with AI Agents
• Demo 2: A Day in the Life of a Relationship Manager with AI
• Demo 3: A Day in the Life of a Velocity Seller with AI
• Demo 4: A Day in the Life of a Sales Leader with AI
• Demo 5: Get Started with Sales Agents

The post Empower your sales team with AI agents: a practical guide  appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The combination of hyperscale computing and GenAI is gathering pace, presenting new challenges – and huge opportunities – for business intelligence. Speaking as someone who’s spent a career balancing technological promise with real-world impact, it’s an exciting moment.  

Find the signals in the noise 

Much of this starts with visibility. In the past, valuable insights were often hidden inside unstructured conversations, documents or legacy systems. Unlocking them required time, specialist skills and lots of manual effort. Many organisations simply couldn’t make use of the valuable data buried in complexity. Until now.

Just ask Recordsure, an AI-native business that provides speech and transcription services to the finance sector. Its Microsoft Azure-powered RegTech platform now enables every conversation and document from multiple sources to be precisely assessed, risk-scored and acted on – bringing data at scale so that people can make faster, more informed decisions, reduce risk and unlock more value.  

It’s a powerful example of how GenAI can help teams work more quickly and effectively. In addition, as Recordsure CTO Kit Ruparel puts it: “With Azure on-demand computing, rather than bringing the data to the graphics processing unit (GPU), we bring the GPU to the data – and that’s far more secure.” 

Free up people for higher-value work

Another benefit of AI-led data intelligence is freeing people from tedious tasks. One of the biggest misconceptions is that AI replaces jobs outright. In reality, it handles repetitive, rules-based tasks so that people can focus on higher-value projects and strategic thinking: the things humans do best. 

We’re already seeing this in sectors like legal, finance and retail, where the process load is high. For example, Iceland Foods’ AI-powered app, Genie, helps the business respond to shifts in market conditions and customer behaviour. By making real-time data insights available to leaders across the company – not just analysts – Genie is helping teams make faster, smarter decisions every day. 

Build a stronger foundation for AI: four steps 

Of course, every organisation is on its own AI transformation journey – Microsoft included – and there’s no shortcut to maturity. But leaders can focus on four practical priorities to boost the value of their insights.

1. Get your data foundations right

To unlock enterprise value from GenAI, you need high levels of data maturity. That means establishing clear systems to manage provenance, ensure quality and maintain structure. A single source of truth is more vital than ever.

2. Empower everyone to ask better questions

GenAI is democratising data access – and that’s a game changer. Anyone can now query data in plain language and get answers in seconds. The opportunity is to encourage curiosity and build confidence. When frontline staff can interrogate information themselves, they move from recipients of reports to active participants in decision-making.

3. Foster a governance culture

Aim to embed AI governance into your organisation’s strategy and culture, with every team at every level equipped to question and validate the answers AI gives them. To quote my colleague and National Technology Officer for Microsoft Public Sector UK, Glen Robinson: “Strong governance around model safety, bias and responsible use is no longer just a developer’s concern.”  

4. Share successes and scale fast

The most valuable AI use cases often come from those closest to the work. As your organisation starts to experiment with AI in business intelligence, create simple ways to capture what’s working, share it, and adapt it across teams. AI progress should never happen in silos. 

Move from dashboards to decision-making 

Business intelligence today isn’t just about dashboards and reports – it’s about building ecosystems for fast, trustworthy decisions at scale. By building a strong data infrastructure, fostering a culture of empowerment and focusing on high-impact use cases, organisations can deliver a huge leap forward in insight-generation and application. 

Robust governance is also paramount, and that’s where a platform like Microsoft Fabric – which combines multiple data and analytics tools in a single, integrated environment – can be invaluable. Fabric delivers traceability and compliance out of the box, while also helping shift organisational culture by making good governance part of how you build and deploy AI tools, not just how you police them.

As Aristotle recognised, wisdom starts with understanding. Today, organisations that harness hyperscale data and GenAI can turn understanding into smarter decisions and real-world results. 

Find out more 

Register for Microsoft Ignite 

Visit the Microsoft UK AI Hub 

About the author

Jed is an inspiring strategic thinker who models Microsoft’s technology vision to UK businesses, guiding leaders to maximise the cloud and AI for innovation and value creation. As a technologist passionate about human-centred design, he champions a growth culture that embraces the responsible use of technology, data and AI.

With a diverse background spanning national security, nuclear policy and applied physics, Jed brings a distinctive perspective to digital strategy. Certified in Six Sigma and lean methodologies, and skilled at aligning technology with C-suite priorities, he excels at setting direction in ambiguity and overcoming new and complex challenges.

The post Hyperscale data and GenAI: transforming business intelligence for better decisions  appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Unlike server-bound tools, cloud-native solutions aren’t tied to specific teams, offices or regions. They can be quickly and easily embedded into platforms like GitHub and Azure DevOps, then made available across your organisation.  

In addition, because vendors constantly update these solutions, your dev teams gain instant access to the latest AI capabilities and benefit from economies of scale. They also ensure your people always work within a secure, tested infrastructure that keeps pace with an ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape. 

Supercharging output – and imagination 

Take GitHub Copilot agents, for example, which can now handle tasks from automated documentation to app creation. I recently tested one to build an app from scratch – it took just seven minutes. 

The productivity gains are real. Some organisations have seen developer output increase by 25–50%. A senior technology executive at a global bank told me: “I can deliver a 30% productivity improvement for the price of three cups of coffee a month per developer”. Another said their business can now serve 100 times more customers with only twice the staff. The maths adds up. 

But this isn’t just about efficiency. Cloud-native tools can spark a culture of creativity and problem-solving. Freed from routine tasks, devs gain more time to tackle deep-rooted issues like legacy tech debt – or to drive entirely new ideas. For example, at Mercedes-Benz, engineers used GitHub Copilot to automate repetitive coding, freeing them to focus on developing new in-car experiences and intelligent mobility solutions.

Even decades-old mainframe code can now be untangled with AI, helping teams unlock new opportunities faster than ever.

New talent, new expectations 

There’s a vital talent angle, too. Today’s developers expect workplace tools that match the AI they use in everyday life. This is driving organisations to modernise their AI stacks not just to boost productivity but to attract and retain top talent.  

The next generation of devs wants to innovate constantly, using tools that enhance creativity, not hold it back. No surprise that more companies now highlight their use of AI solutions like Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot in recruitment.

Governance is still king 

What about risk? Some business leaders worry AI could generate flawed or unsafe code. But this misunderstands how software development works. 

No one pushes code straight to production without checks, whether it’s written by a human or a machine. AI just gets you there faster, often with better code. Tools like GitHub Advanced Security add extra security with threat scanning, secret detection and compliance at every stage – and with GitHub’s free secret scanning, you can check your organisation’s exposure to leaked secrets today. These are the same tools Microsoft uses to secure its own platforms. 

Executive sponsorship also matters. Organisations with strong C-suite backing move fastest. Many see success where CIOs commit to regular reviews of adoption and KPIs. Success comes not just from the tools but from leadership that prioritises innovation and encourages everyone to contribute. 

Don’t get left behind 

Cloud-native AI is reshaping software development – a shift that could prove as profound as the original computing revolution. With the right tools and a culture of innovation, dev teams can do better, more creative work at greater speed and scale, all within a secure, collaborative environment.  

And this is just the beginning. Agentic AI will soon help teams build multi-role agents and turn skilled developers into super-developers capable of transforming how business gets done. 

For leaders, now is the time to act. Unlock productivity, energise your developers, increase agility and accelerate innovation. And if you’re not using these cloud-native tools yet, there’s a good chance your competitors are. Try them – then try them again. You’ll wonder how your dev teams ever worked without them. 

Find out more 

Register for Microsoft Ignite 

Get the latest dev updates at the Microsoft Build website

Read the e-book: How to modernise your apps: unlock the potential of AI with Azure

About the author

Santosh Takoor is a seasoned technology executive with over 25 years of global leadership experience across digital innovation, enterprise sales, and customer success. Currently serving as Head of Cloud & AI Platform for Public Sector at Microsoft UK, Santosh has held senior roles at Roambee, Salesforce, SAP, and KPMG. He is known for driving transformative growth, scaling enterprise businesses, and championing customer-centric innovation across EMEA and beyond. A Chartered Accountant and MBA graduate from Warwick Business School, Santosh combines strategic insight with operational excellence to deliver impactful business outcomes.

The post Want to accelerate innovation? Empower your dev teams with cloud-native AI tools appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Navigating a new development model

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions once frustrated both callers and developers with repeated “sorry, I didn’t understand” messages. In traditional software development, you wrote code to send an API request, parse a defined response and handle known errors in predictable ways. Testing was clear-cut.

Today, with LLM-based agents, development works differently. Developers guide models to say “I don’t know” when appropriate – an essential part of building trustworthy experiences. This requires prompting the model to reason probabilistically, rather than following fixed rules.

The shift means guiding the model to associate customer intent with the correct API call and the necessary parameters to execute the API call successfully – a more flexible, less deterministic approach.

Designing for consistency and clarity

Even small changes in phrasing or context can lead to variations in the model’s interpretation. As a result, evaluating performance is no longer about binary success. Instead, it’s about assessing how reliably the model maps natural language to structured API calls across a wide variety of inputs, edge cases and unseen user behaviour.

With new metrics and processes required, bridging the gap from proof-of-concept to production-grade application becomes a significant business challenge. Indeed, Gartner predicts that at least 30% of generative AI projects will be abandoned after proof-of-concept by the end of 2025. As AI technology advances, aligning enterprise expectations, workflows and development methods will be critical to delivering long-term value.

Voice AI’s transformative promise

Even with these new dynamics, the opportunity for voice AI agents is vast. Contact centres – complex, high-volume environments – may be transformed by agentic solutions that can scale, support human agents or enable autonomous customer experiences.

For the first time, voice becomes a truly intelligent interface. AI agents can interact conversationally, adapt in real time, and generate new insights into customer preferences and the overall customer journey at a previously unimaginable scale.

This isn’t just a new channel – it’s a smarter way to support one of the enterprise’s most personal customer touchpoints.

Building for production: PolyAI’s approach

PolyAI has worked with LLMs since 2017, partnering with leading enterprises like Pacific Gas & Electric, Caesars Entertainment and Unicredit to deploy voice agents that manage millions of conversations with fluency and enterprise-grade reliability.

That experience shaped PolyAI Agent Studio – our enterprise platform designed to help teams build, manage and continuously improve production-grade voice agents.

Powering our platform is a tightly integrated suite of proprietary models: Owl for speech recognition and Raven for reasoning. These models give us something off-the-shelf systems can’t – fine-grained control, deep observability and continuous learning from real-world conversations.

With reinforcement fine-tuning, our agents become more reliable over time, improving how they respond, manage uncertainty and support seamless customer conversations.

Our context-orchestration framework lets developers connect from CRMs, telephony, APIs or user history with precision, allowing personalised, brand-consistent interactions at scale while limiting the risk of hallucinations.

At the heart of our platform is fluency: enabling AI agents to respond with relevance, continuity and clarity.

Deploying with Microsoft Azure

By extending Agent Studio to Microsoft Azure, enterprises gain more control over how they deploy PolyAI agents, whether for compliance, data residency or closer integration with their Microsoft ecosystem.

We’re also building integrations with Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Microsoft Teams, enabling faster deployment of voice AI agents into high-value customer service workflows.

Find out more

Visit the Microsoft Azure Marketplace for more about PolyAI’s solution

Read MIT’s Technology Review Insights Report on Customizing Generative AI

About the author

Michael Chen is the VP of Strategic Alliances and Corporate Development at PolyAI. He leads a team focused on expanding PolyAI’s collaborative relationships with cloud providers, technology partners and global systems integrators. Michael has been on the frontier of the LLM and generative AI revolution since 2020, bringing expertise and perspectives across corporate strategy, customer experience, product marketing and business transformation.

The post How PolyAI helps enterprises deploy production-grade voice AI agents faster appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.