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.

Through platforms like Microsoft Azure, Copilot, Azure OpenAI services and the Microsoft Cloud Partner Programme, we’re supporting law enforcement innovators. These AI-powered tools help them scale solutions that improve investigations, boost efficiency and protect public trust. 

From faster evidence-processing and predictive analytics to innovative solutions that strengthen cybersecurity and improve victim safeguarding, Microsoft and its partners are helping drive modernisation across UK policing.  

Advancing national law enforcement

Our partnership efforts align with key national priorities. These include tackling serious and organised crime, countering terrorism, addressing violence against women and girls, advancing digital transformation, and delivering operational efficiency. Ethical, responsible data use underpins all our work.

Moreover, this transformation is now backed by a clear national strategy. In 2024, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) appointed its first AI Lead to guide responsible adoption across UK forces. All Chief Constables have signed the AI Covenant, a set of principles ensuring AI is used transparently, fairly and with human oversight.  

In addition, the College of Policing has issued guidance on building AI-enabled tools. As a result, forces are starting with low-risk use cases like redaction and call triage before deploying predictive systems.

Partner spotlight: innovators transforming UK policing

Altia and Pimloc are just two examples of UK software development companies using Microsoft technology to tackle policing priorities. Their work ranges from digital evidence management to privacy protection and intelligence-led investigations. 

Digital evidence overload is one of the biggest challenges facing UK police forces. Altia, a Nottingham-based investigations software company, uses AI and Microsoft Azure to automate time-consuming tasks like transcribing interviews, summarising case files and linking entities across datasets. 

Altia’s tools help officers find connections faster, reduce manual data entry and streamline case management. Whether it’s fraud, organised crime or financial investigations, Altia’s AI-powered platform acts as a digital assistant – freeing up officers to focus on solving cases, not paperwork. 

Privacy and compliance are critical in modern policing, especially when sharing video and audio evidence. Pimloc, a London-based software company, addresses this with SecureRedact – a world-leading, AI-powered multimodal redaction platform built on Azure. 

Pimloc’s technology automatically detects and blurs faces/heads; screens; personally identifiable information (PII) in audio and personal identifiers in CCTV; and dashcam, bodycam and drone footage. This enables faster, GDPR-compliant responses to subject access requests and court disclosures, while protecting sensitive data and building public trust. 

Microsoft’s role in UK policing transformation 

The journey is just beginning. We’re seeing AI move from pilots to operational use across UK policing. The NPCC’s Police.AI strategy has an AI Lead overseeing national co-ordination, which is driving this transition. At the same time, forces are investing in infrastructure and training to ensure staff can confidently use these new tools. 

In addition, Microsoft continues to refine its public safety offerings. This includes integrating OpenAI’s latest models into more products, strengthening cloud security and compliance for police data, and nurturing an ecosystem of partners to solve real-world policing challenges. 

In 2025, the Police Digital Service launched the National Police Capabilities Environment (NPCE) – a secure Azure-based cloud platform designed specifically for UK policing. It enables forces to deploy shared applications and AI tools at scale, reducing duplication and accelerating innovation.  

Microsoft Copilot is also making its way into policing workflows. From automating report-writing and summarising case files to flagging compliance risks and surfacing insights from large datasets, Copilot helps officers and staff work faster and smarter.

These tools are now being explored in areas like public contact, investigations, training, HR and finance, cutting through backlogs and improving outcomes without increasing workload.

Ensuring ethical AI, privacy and public trust 

Policing leaders are clear: AI will never replace officers. It’s a tool to support them, not supplant them. Accordingly, the NPCC’s AI Covenant and the College of Policing’s guidance ensure that AI deployments are transparent, fair and subject to human oversight. 

Concerns around privacy and bias are also being tackled head-on. Facial recognition algorithms used by UK police have undergone independent testing, and the Home Office plans to consult on new legislation to govern the use of live facial recognition (LFR).  

Moreover, the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Alan Turing Institute have published joint guidance on explaining decisions made with AI.  

Ready to partner with Microsoft?

If you’re a UK-based policing startup or software vendor, here’s how to get started:

• Join Microsoft for Startups: access Azure credits, technical support and mentorship. 

• Join our ISV Success Programme: for more established vendors, this programme helps you build, scale and sell solutions with Microsoft’s support.

• List on Azure Marketplace: reach UK policing and global public-sector customers by publishing your solution on our commercial marketplace. You can also connect with me to talk about the next steps in partner success with Microsoft.  

Find out more 

Build and sell your solutions with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Programme 

About the author

Ruth is a Senior Partner Development Manager at Microsoft. With a focus on driving partner success, Ruth plays a pivotal role in fostering strategic partnerships within the public sector. Her expertise lies in collaborating with software development companies (SDCs) and other businesses with substantial growth potential, particularly those interested in AI and disruptive market strategies. 

The post Transforming policing with AI: scale your impact with Microsoft   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

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In addition, a McKinsey report states that generative AI could unlock between $240 billion to $390 billion in value for retailers. When combined with non-generative AI and analytics, the total value created could reach into the trillions.

These reports suggest the retail industry is at a pivotal moment. Generative AI is no longer a future concept – it’s actively reshaping how retailers operate and compete. For software development companies, this shift isn’t just a trend to watch, it’s a transformation to build for.

From experimentation to execution

Retail-focused software development companies are no longer just exploring generative AI – they’re deploying it at scale. Microsoft partners are leading the charge, embedding AI into retail operations to deliver measurable outcomes.

Here are four standout examples:

• Blue Yonder is working with Microsoft to build next-generation supply chain solutions powered by generative AI. Their AI copilots help retailers create agile, resilient and sustainable supply chains, connecting data across ecosystems to identify issues and optimise performance in real time.
• Adobe is leveraging Microsoft Azure to deliver personalised customer experiences at scale. Through Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Campaign, retailers can unify customer data and orchestrate AI-powered journeys across channels – turning insights into action with speed and precision.
• VusionGroup, a global leader in IoT and data solutions for physical commerce, is transforming bricks-and-mortar stores into intelligent, connected assets. By combining generative AI with Azure’s global infrastructure, they enable retailers to optimise store operations, reduce waste, and deliver seamless omnichannel experiences.
• Promo.com, supported by Microsoft partner 2bcloud, scaled its PromoAI product using Azure OpenAI Service. The platform empowers small businesses and agencies to generate branded marketing videos in minutes.

Ultimately, these examples reflect a broader industry shift in how SDCs are building for the future of retail. By co-innovating with Microsoft, partners are accelerating time to value, expanding their reach, and shaping the next wave of AI-powered retail transformation.

Implications for software development companies

For software development companies, the rise of generative AI in retail is more than a technical shift, it’s a strategic inflection point. To support this transformation, Microsoft’s perspective on AI in retail is grounded in four key transformation areas, each offering a blueprint for how SDCs can build differentiated value:

1. Enriching employee experiences
   AI can empower frontline and back-office retail employees with intelligent tools that reduce friction and boost productivity. SDCs can build copilots and task-specific agents that automate repetitive work, surface insights in real time and support decision-making, whether in stores, warehouses or HQ.
   
2. Reinventing customer engagement
   Today’s consumers expect personalised, seamless experiences across channels. Generative AI enables hyper-personalised content, conversational commerce and adaptive interfaces. SDCs can help retailers deliver these experiences by embedding AI into customer relationship management (CRM), marketing and service platforms.
   
3. Reshaping business processes
   From supply chain optimisation to fraud detection, AI is transforming core retail operations. SDCs can create modular, API-first solutions that integrate with legacy systems and modernise workflows, driving efficiency, agility and resilience.
   
4. Bending the curve on innovation
   Generative AI lowers the barrier to experimentation and accelerates time to value. SDCs that embrace co-innovation, working closely with retailers to prototype, test and iterate, can unlock new business models and revenue streams. Leveraging Microsoft’s ecosystem for co-sell, scale and technical enablement can further amplify impact.

How Microsoft partnership supports growth

We view our relationship with software development companies not just as a platform and AI provider, but as a strategic growth partner. Working side-by-side with SDCs, we help them unlock new markets, co-innovate and scale their impact globally.

Whether you’re building a new AI-powered retail solution or modernising an existing platform, Microsoft offers more than just infrastructure. We offer partnership support that includes:

• Collaborating early to shape product direction and align with market needs.
• Co-selling together through our global commercial marketplace.
• Connecting you with customers through curated industry programmes and events.
• Investing in your success with go-to-market support, technical enablement and funding opportunities.

We’re seeing the most successful SDCs treat Microsoft not just as a cloud provider, but as a business development partner – one that helps them move faster, reach further and grow stronger.

Looking ahead

If you’re a software development company building for the retail industry, now is the time to act. By harnessing generative AI, those who move early will shape the future.

As a Partner Development Manager at Microsoft, I work directly with SDCs to help them scale faster, co-innovate with confidence and unlock new commercial opportunities. Whether you’re exploring your first AI-powered solution or looking to expand into new markets, let’s connect and explore how we can grow together in this era of AI-powered retail.

Join the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Programme

You can start accelerating success today by joining the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Programme. Meanwhile, we invite you to explore two key SDC resources via our links below – an e-book explaining how to build intelligent apps that elevate user experiences, and a webinar outlining our latest ISV Success resources and incentives. 

Find out more

Download the e-book: Transform ISV Applications with Intelligent AI Personalisation 

Watch the webinar: What is New in ISV Success – AI Benefits and More 

Join the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Programme

AI-powered retail: Elevating customer experience and operational efficiency

About the author

As a Partner Development Manager at Microsoft, James specialises in strategic engagement with software development companies in the retail and consumer goods sectors. He focuses on identifying and accelerating high-potential partners, particularly those innovating with AI and disruptive technologies. James plays a key role in enabling partner growth through co-innovation, go-to-market strategy and ecosystem alignment.

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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.

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.

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