As the world navigates a critical phase for energy, the recent CERAWeek 2026 event showcased how leaders are addressing an era defined by convergence and competition—where technology and energy markets are deeply intertwined, and resilience must align with sustainability. The theme of CERAWeek 2026—“Convergence and Competition: Energy, Technology and Geopolitics”—proved to be remarkably relevant as discussions unfolded throughout the week.

It was evident that energy markets have become inseparable from digital infrastructure. AI is rapidly reshaping power demand, while supply chains remain vulnerable to geopolitical pressures. Throughout the conference, energy leaders confronted the simultaneous demands of security, affordability, and decarbonization.

Microsoft’s perspective was clear: we are entering the new Energy Frontier, where data, AI, and cloud computing serve as essential enablers for trust, resilience, and growth throughout the energy value chain.

AI emerged as a central topic in creating a more responsive and robust energy system. In this landscape of convergence and competition, energy executives are being challenged to identify disruptions earlier, pivot strategies rapidly, and make informed decisions amid global uncertainty, market fragmentation, and ongoing climate challenges. AI is no longer just a productivity booster—it’s now foundational to secure, real-time, and adaptive energy operations. The consensus at CERAWeek was that the decade’s leading organizations will be those that leverage AI to transition from static systems to intelligent, adaptive solutions.

From physical infrastructures to smart systems: Lessons from the event

This transformation was highlighted across the energy chain:

• Oil and gas companies are striving to balance investment with emissions reduction, safety, and operational resilience.
• Power and utilities are contending with surging electricity demand from electrification and data centers, while modernizing grids and preparing for extreme weather.
• Natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) are more global and sensitive to geopolitical change than ever before.
• Mining and materials are recognized as essential to clean energy and electrification efforts.
• Policy, permitting, and regulation were frequently cited as critical to the pace of new projects.

At the heart of the discussions was AI—driving higher electricity consumption, transforming asset management, and unlocking new opportunities for analysis, prediction, and system optimization. The lines between energy and technology have all but disappeared.

Rising competition in a fragmented world: What CERAWeek revealed

The conference underscored how competition is intensifying. Geopolitical tensions, trade barriers, and supply chain disruptions are now permanent features of the marketplace. Energy leaders spoke candidly about the ongoing need to operate in environments marked by uncertainty—managing regional conflicts, cyber risks, volatile weather, and price swings.

Resilience, once seen as a defensive posture, is now a source of competitive strength. The organizations best able to anticipate disruptions, respond dynamically, and maintain secure operations in complex conditions will continue to lead. But as participants agreed, this requires more than incremental change—it calls for innovative operating models grounded in trusted data, intelligent platforms, and secure cloud infrastructures.

Microsoft at CERAWeek: Advancing on the Energy Frontier

At CERAWeek 2026, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to empowering energy and resource companies to seize the opportunities created by convergence and competition.

The Microsoft Agora House hosted sessions and live demonstrations illustrating how cloud, data, and AI technologies are addressing industry-wide challenges—not in isolation, but across the entire energy ecosystem.

Our collaboration with clients and partners around the world continues to focus on four key priorities:

1. Developing an AI‑ready energy workforce

The complexity of energy systems is rising as workforce dynamics shift. Companies struggle with talent shortages, aging employees, and the urgent need for large-scale reskilling—while keeping operations safe, dependable, and efficient.

AI stands out as a catalyst for equipping the next generation workforce. With Microsoft tools, organizations can:

• Automate tasks, both routine and knowledge-based, across engineering, operations, and business functions.
• Deliver AI-powered training and reskilling tailored to technical and frontline jobs.
• Foster collaboration among IT, operational technology (OT), and field teams using secure, integrated platforms.

Our aim isn’t to replace people but to enhance expertise, streamline processes, and let teams concentrate on high-impact work—whether they’re managing intricate assets, tackling emergencies, or speeding up innovation.

2. Strengthening and optimizing operations amid volatility

Operational reliability is more important than ever in a divided world.

With increasing digitization, energy infrastructures are more exposed to cyber, physical, and geopolitical threats. Meanwhile, profitability relies on maximizing uptime, performance, and safety.

Microsoft assists energy firms to:

• Integrate IT and OT data for comprehensive operational insights.
• Leverage AI and analytics for improved asset reliability and predictive maintenance.
• Bolster cybersecurity across critical and industrial infrastructures.

These advancements help leaders shift from merely reacting to events toward predicting and modeling scenarios—a necessity as disruptions grow more frequent and less predictable.

3. Driving net‑zero progress through data and AI

Net-zero commitments are now about action, not theory.

Tackling methane emissions, scaling carbon capture, updating power grids, and bringing renewables online all require accurate data, transparent tracking, and sophisticated systems operating at scale.

Microsoft enables customers to:

• Track and manage emissions with dependable, verifiable data.
• Utilize AI for methane detection, carbon accounting, and climate risk assessments.
• Modernize grid infrastructure to support electrification and renewable integration.

Success in sustainability now goes hand-in-hand with competitiveness. Organizations that transform climate ambition into actionable results will attract investment, secure approvals, and build public trust.

4. Becoming the Energy Frontier with agentic AI

A transformative development shaping the Energy Frontier is the advent of agentic AI—intelligent systems capable of reasoning, acting, and adapting in complex contexts.

At CERAWeek, we presented agentic AI solutions that:

• Streamline approval and regulatory workflows.
• Refine energy trading, logistics, and supply chain management.
• Support scenario planning involving weather, geopolitics, and changing demand.

These are not isolated fixes—they represent a new class of systems built for navigating uncertainty, helping leaders evaluate trade-offs, anticipate impacts, and accelerate decision-making confidently.

A call for leadership and collaboration

CERAWeek 2026 reaffirmed its role as a crucible for shaping the future of energy. Technological convergence is dissolving traditional industry boundaries, while competition is redefining how value is created and protected. As the event concluded, the message was clear: those who invest early in intelligent platforms, credible AI, and flexible operating models will define the coming era.

Microsoft remains committed to working closely with energy and resource organizations, building secure, sustainable, and adaptive systems that fulfill the promise of the Energy Frontier. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with industry, government, and technology leaders to continue shaping the future together—well beyond CERAWeek 2026.

Thank you to everyone who joined us at the Microsoft Agora House. The conversations, forums, and real-world stories shared have set a new pace for innovation—demonstrating how data, AI, and cloud are truly revolutionizing the global energy system.

The post CERAWeek 2026: Reflections on convergence, competition, and the new Energy Frontier appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Digital sovereignty has rapidly moved from a policy debate to a strategic business priority. As nations recognize that cloud, data, and AI are quickly becoming the backbone of economic competitiveness and national security, the focus has shifted toward managing risk, ensuring control, and building resilience in an increasingly volatile environment.

At the same time, leaders face unprecedented complexity: fragmented regulations, rising cyber threats, geopolitical volatility, and accelerating AI adoption are reshaping where data can live, how AI can be trained, and how organizations can balance innovation with control.

Against this backdrop, Microsoft convened global policymakers, CIOs, partners, regulators, and industry leaders in Brussels—and online—for the 2026 Microsoft Digital Sovereignty Summit. The summit brought forward a shared message: Digital sovereignty is not a fixed destination; it is a continuous risk management discipline that underpins resilience, security, and innovation.

Below, we’ll dive into our top five insights from the event and what they mean for organizations both across Europe and globally.

5 key insights from the 2026 Microsoft Digital Sovereignty Summit

1. Digital sovereignty is fundamentally about risk management

One of the clearest themes from the summit was a shift in how leaders define digital sovereignty: not as an abstract policy concept, but as a practical exercise in risk management.

Leaders emphasized that sovereignty today means understanding and managing a complex risk landscape spanning cybersecurity threats, geopolitical disruption, regulatory requirements, and business continuity. The objective is not to eliminate risk entirely, but to assess it clearly and manage it proportionally.

A key takeaway from discussions was that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Every organization—and every workload—has a unique risk profile, legal obligation, and level of criticality. As a result, sovereignty decisions must be made deliberately, workload by workload, rather than through a single architectural choice or a “universal sovereign cloud” model. This view reflects a broader industry trend away from location‑based assurances and toward enforceable, auditable control across data, operations, and AI.

This reframing marks an important shift: digital sovereignty is no longer about rigid control or ideology but about enabling organizations to operate confidently in uncertainty.

2. Cybersecurity is the foundation of digital sovereignty

A central message throughout the summit was clear: sovereignty without cybersecurity is a non-starter.

Cyber risk has become the most immediate and pervasive threat across sectors, from government and defense to finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. Leaders emphasized that cyber threats are persistent, adaptive, and increasingly linked to geopolitical dynamics.

Importantly, discussions challenged the common misconception that isolation equals security. Disconnecting systems or building digital “walls” can create blind spots by limiting access to shared threat intelligence, coordinated response capabilities, and real-time threat detection. As highlighted during the event, modern cyber defense depends on scale, collaboration, and integrated visibility across identity, endpoints, cloud infrastructure, applications, and data.

This reinforces a critical point: sovereignty cannot be achieved without cybersecurity. Without continuous access to global threat intelligence, modern cyber defenses, and interoperable security platforms, organizations cannot maintain real control, resilience, or continuity, regardless of where data resides.

3. Sovereignty and innovation are not tradeoffs; they are mutually reinforcing

Summit speakers shared a strong consensus that organizations do not need to choose between innovation and control. When grounded in strong security and governance, sovereignty creates the conditions necessary for innovation to thrive.

From legal and contractual commitments to purpose-built technical capabilities, discussions highlighted how sovereign frameworks can reduce uncertainty to allow teams to adopt cloud and AI with greater confidence, enabling organizations to move faster, not slower.

This perspective reframes digital sovereignty from a perceived constraint into a strategic enabler that supports competitiveness, resilience, and growth across Europe’s digital economy.

4. Sovereign and powerful AI requires responsible data processing and transparent control

Another major insight from the summit was the growing expectation that sovereign AI must be built on responsible data processing and transparent control. Leaders emphasized that as AI becomes more deeply embedded in core operations, organizations need systems that not only meet today’s regulatory and security obligations, but remain trustworthy, auditable, and resilient as requirements continue to evolve.

Sovereignty in the age of AI extends well beyond data residency. It requires clear, enforceable boundaries around where data is processed, how it is used, and how AI models are trained and executed, combined with full visibility into how AI systems operate across their lifecycle. Assumptions of trust are no longer sufficient—organizations increasingly expect verifiable control, including customer-managed encryption, protections for data while in use, restrictions on operator access, and auditable governance mechanisms that demonstrate compliance in practice.

Critically, sovereignty must be designed end-to-end—spanning infrastructure, platforms, security, data governance, and AI workloads. It is not a single architectural choice or off-the-shelf solution, but a workload-dependent approach aligned to risk, criticality, and mission needs. The summit highlighted how new capabilities are being built across the stack to support sovereign requirements at scale.

5. Digital sovereignty succeeds through collaboration, not isolation

A final and critical insight from the Summit was that digital sovereignty succeeds through collaboration, not isolation.

Across panels and discussions, leaders reinforced that sovereignty depends on ecosystems, where governments, enterprises, and technology providers work together to translate policy into operational reality. Attempts to isolate systems or fragment digital infrastructure can increase risk rather than reduce it, limiting access to innovation, intelligence, and coordinated defense.

Real world examples from customers across Europe, including organizations running regulated workloads on Azure Local, demonstrated how collaboration enables sovereignty at scale. Combining local expertise with global platforms helps organizations maintain control, meet regulatory requirements, and drive innovation simultaneously.

The message was clear: sovereignty is not the responsibility of any single institution. It is a shared commitment, strengthened through cooperation across public and private sectors, and reinforced by partners who align with local priorities.

Digital sovereignty posture in practice

A strong digital sovereignty posture gives organizations choice, visibility, and control across diverse environments. As emphasized throughout the summit, the objective is to align capabilities with risk exposure, regulatory expectations, and the specific needs of different workloads, applying proportionate controls rather than forcing a single model across the entire estate.

In public cloud settings, this means transparency, strong encryption, clear access controls, and accountable operations. For workloads that need greater isolation or local control, hybrid and sovereign solutions provide essential options. Earlier this year, Microsoft expanded its sovereign cloud continuum, enabling critical workloads to run in constrained or disconnected environments while still benefiting from innovation and advanced security practices. This enables critical workloads to run in constrained or disconnected environments while still benefiting from innovation and advanced security practices.

Organizations must focus on flexibility, working to meet today’s requirements while preparing for tomorrow. Features like the EU Data Boundary, long-standing encryption and access safeguards, and operational transparency give customers concrete ways to align with regulations and manage risk.

Across public, hybrid, and private clouds, Microsoft’s approach combines operational discipline with commitments to privacy, security, and responsible AI, creating a foundation for trust, resilience, and sustainable digital sovereignty.

Rooted in risk management

Across every session and conversation throughout the summit, one theme was unmistakable: digital sovereignty is now a continuous, organization-wide discipline rooted in risk management.

Leaders must balance security, compliance, resilience, and innovation—making deliberate, workload-specific decisions in an environment where risks are constantly evolving. Organizations that succeed will be those that treat sovereignty not as a fixed state, but as an adaptive capability built on strong cybersecurity, flexible architectures, and trusted collaboration.

The 2026 Microsoft Digital Sovereignty Summit made this clearer than ever: a sovereign, secure, and innovative digital future is possible, and it’s already taking shape.

Learn more about Microsoft’s approach to Sovereign Cloud and Sovereign AI

• Microsoft Sovereign Cloud website
  
• Build sovereign AI at the edge with Azure Local
  
• Microsoft Sovereign Cloud adds governance, productivity and support for large AI models securely running even when completely disconnected
  
• Navigating digital sovereignty at the frontier of transformation
  
• IDC InfoBrief: Digital Sovereignty Reconsidered: From Location-Based Assurance to Enforceable Control
  
• Sovereignty designed in Europe: Microsoft opens its first studio for resilient cloud and AI architectures in Munich, Brussels and Amsterdam
  
• Microsoft Sovereign Cloud in Europe white paper
  
• Discover Microsoft Sovereign Cloud videos
  

The post 5 takeaways from the 2026 Microsoft Digital Sovereignty Summit appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

New capabilities include the ability to surface relevant work-related information alongside patient data for customers using Microsoft 365 Copilot; partner-built AI apps and agents available through Microsoft Marketplace that extend intelligence across revenue cycle, clinical insights, and decision support; and expanded role-based experiences for physicians, nurses, and radiologists designed to scale securely across settings and geographies.

Today, more than 100,000 clinicians rely on Dragon Copilot as part of their daily practice—supporting care for millions of patients every month. That kind of adoption doesn’t happen by accident; it happens when technology earns trust, fits naturally into clinical workflows, and proves its value day after day. As healthcare continues to accelerate, the question facing organizations is no longer if AI will be part of care delivery, but how quickly they can equip their teams with tools that scale safely, work across roles, and keep clinicians focused on patients. The new Dragon Copilot capabilities we’re introducing at HIMSS 2026 build on this proven foundation—extending trusted clinical support beyond documentation to meet the growing demands of modern care.

Clinicians need more than access to data—they need an AI assistant that works alongside them, understands context, and supports action across systems and settings. Built on Microsoft Azure, Dragon Copilot delivers this capability with enterprise‑grade security, responsible AI, and cloud scale—giving organizations the confidence to deploy broadly and grow with care teams wherever they work.

“We ultimately went with Microsoft because of the security, the compliance, the scalability, and the fact that they’ve delivered reliable solutions for years.”

—Snehal Gandhi, MD, Vice President and Chief Medical Information Officer, Cooper University Health Care

See what Dragon Copilot has to offer:

Unifying the disparate—so care teams can move faster, with confidence

By unifying information from across systems and sources, Dragon Copilot reduces fragmentation and unnecessary searching—bringing patient data, trusted clinical content, and partner powered AI insights into a single, contextual experience within the clinical workflow.

What makes this approach different is not just access to information, but how intelligence is delivered and applied. Clinicians can naturally query, summarize, create, and act using voice or text—without toggling between tools. Insights are surfaced instantly in one place, enabling care teams to move fluidly from understanding to action while spending less time navigating systems and more time with patients.

That intelligence is grounded in a broad set of trusted sources, including:

• Prebuilt trusted clinical content with citations
• Patient data like diagnoses, labs, medications, and allergies
• Organizational content such as policies, procedures, schedules, and communications

When needed, reliable web information can also be accessed through a safety‑first pathway—ensuring responses remain appropriate for clinical use.

Care delivery depends on more than clinical facts—it also depends on fast access to the work context around care. With Microsoft 365 Copilot, powered by Work IQ and accessible inside Dragon Copilot, clinicians can pull in relevant work-related information from connected apps and enterprise data, right where they’re already working. Work IQ is the intelligence layer that helps Copilot understand how people collaborate across emails, files, meetings, and chats—so responses are grounded in the right context. The result is a more unified experience that reduces time spent searching across tools and keeps momentum inside the clinical workflow.

Dragon Copilot extends clinical intelligence beyond any single system or screen. Instead of being locked into one interface, clinicians can invoke powerful AI capabilities wherever they’re already working—across applications, EHRs, and web pages. By simply clicking or highlighting text, Dragon Copilot can read, understand, and apply its intelligence directly in context, without forcing clinicians to switch tools or reenter information.

For example, a clinician reviewing a note can place their cursor over a sentence and say, “Add more detail about what the patient shared regarding their cardiac history.” Dragon Copilot immediately expands the documentation using the surrounding clinical context—no copying, no pasting, and no workflow disruption—helping clinicians move faster while keeping their focus on the patient, not the screen.

Building on this foundation, Dragon Copilot further unifies innovation through AI apps and agents available in Microsoft Marketplace. Developed by partners such as Canary Speech, Humata Health, Optum, and Regard, these solutions deliver capabilities across clinical insights, revenue cycle management, prior authorization, and clinical decision support. Organizations can easily purchase, deploy, and scale partner innovation—while clinicians experience those insights directly within their existing workflows.

“Sentara Health is integrating Regard’s diagnosis and documentation technology within Dragon Copilot to save time, improve revenue integrity, and most importantly improve care.

By combining Dragon’s ambient conversation capture with Regard’s ability to surface key insights from data, we expect to help our clinicians identify comorbidities and relevant diagnoses in real time without adding steps to their workflow. Our goal is straightforward: strengthen the clinical picture, reduce documentation burden, and support more informed decision-making at the point of care.”

—Dr. Joseph Evans, Vice President, Chief Health Information Officer at Sentara Health

Simplifying the complex—so care teams can be present with patients

Dragon Copilot streamlines clinical documentation and routine tasks, so clinicians spend less time navigating systems and more time focused on patient care. By simplifying physician and nursing charting, notes, flowsheets, and radiology reporting, it reduces rework and cognitive burden—helping care teams work more efficiently and confidently across the day.

This simplification is powered by healthcare-grade AI models built for clinical accuracy, with clinical note quality evaluated using the Provider Document Summarization Quality Instrument (PDSQI9)—an industry standard developed with leading academic and healthcare institutions to ensure clear, consistent, and clinically appropriate outputs.

Beyond documentation, Dragon Copilot automates high friction tasks across the workflow. Persona specific note types, automated referral letters and after‑visit summaries, summaries of prior radiology reports, and proactive coding guidance reduce manual effort and unnecessary toggling—allowing care teams to focus on decisions, not data entry.

New and expanded capabilities include:

• Proactive ICD‑10 specificity suggestions, delivered during note review to support timely, accurate reimbursement.
• Reusable custom clinical documents, created from prompts or examples and managed as templates, allowing clinicians to get additional unique content created automatically, such as custom letters.
• Pull-forward workflow support to jump-start new documentation from prior notes.
• Multilingual conversation capture, connecting with patients in their language. Captures the conversation in 58 languages and automatically converts the encounter into a note written in the primary language used in each country.
• Seamless migration from Dragon Medical One, preserving existing commands, vocabularies, profiles, templates, and AutoTexts.

Scaling across roles, geographies, and devices

Dragon Copilot is designed with role-based experiences that deliver the right capabilities to each clinician, when and where they’re needed. Physicians, nurses, radiologists, and other care team members benefit from workflows tailored to their unique responsibilities—from documentation and care coordination to image interpretation—while organizations maintain consistency, security, and compliance at scale. With a single solution spanning multiple roles, including the only experience built for radiologists and demonstrated outcomes for nurses, healthcare organizations can simplify their technology footprint and drive greater return on investment.

Physicians

Dragon Copilot supports physicians across care settings through EHR‑integrated workflows and a dedicated app available on mobile (iOS and Android), web, and desktop. Physicians can document more efficiently, access timely clinical information, and reduce cognitive load—whether at the point of care or on the go.

Together with partners, Dragon Copilot continues to scale globally and is now available in U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Nurses

Dragon Copilot enhances nursing workflows by ambiently capturing documentation at the point of care and transforming conversations into structured flowsheet entries. With expanded support for all med-surg flowsheet templates and lines, drains, and airways (LDAWs) additions and removals—nurses can document more completely without disrupting care.

Through a dedicated app available on mobile (such as iOS and Android), web, and desktop, nurses can also access information from trusted medical sources, query transcripts to surface key patient details, and create concise summaries—without leaving their workflow—reducing clicks, and keeping focus on patient care.

“Dragon Copilot gives power back to nurses to spend time at the bedside with face-to-face interactions.”

—Stephanie Whitaker, MSN, Registered Nurse, Chief Nursing Officer, Mercy

Nurses using Dragon Copilot have reported reduced cognitive load, faster documentation, and improved patient experience, reinforcing the value of role‑specific AI designed for frontline care. The Dragon Copilot nursing experience is available in the United States.

“I can say that without a doubt, using Dragon Copilot has significantly reduced the time that I’m focused and worrying about sitting down and getting my charting done behind the computer.”

—Christine Dupire, Registered Nurse, Mercy

Radiologists

Paired with PowerScribe One, Dragon Copilot helps minimize repetitive tasks such as reviewing prior reports and automates routine steps in report creation. It surfaces relevant clinical context, integrates customizable AI experiences, and provides intelligent access to credible information—helping radiologists stay focused and deliver high‑quality reports with confidence. The Dragon Copilot radiology experience is currently in preview in the United States.

“As we embrace the next frontier of AI, we know that having cloud-based solutions that work seamlessly with our existing products and systems is paramount. Having Dragon Copilot as a companion for PowerScribe One gives me confidence that I can test and benefit from the latest AI advancements with minimal disruptions and distractions.”

—Sean Cleary, MD, Vice Chair of Informatics for Imaging Sciences University of Rochester Medical Center

Restoring humanity to healthcare through AI

AI will only transform healthcare if it truly serves the people delivering care. Dragon Copilot is built for that purpose—bringing role‑based experiences, hands‑free workflows, and proactive clinical intelligence together in a way that fits naturally into how clinicians work. By unifying information, reducing friction, and extending trusted intelligence across the workflow, Dragon Copilot helps clinicians spend less time managing tasks and more time connecting with patients—restoring focus, confidence, and humanity to the practice of medicine.

Join the more than 100,000 clinicians already using Dragon Copilot

• Visit us at the HIMSS 2026 Booth #2812.
• Get the playbook to learn how clinicians utilize AI to work smarter.
• Download the white paper to explore AI use cases transforming healthcare.

The post Unify. Simplify. Scale: Microsoft Dragon Copilot meets the moment at HIMSS 2026 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

This year, Microsoft had a clear focus at DTECH 2026: help utilities move from pilots to production by unifying IT and OT data, applying AI where it measurably improves reliability, affordability, and productivity and do so with the security and governance necessary for critical infrastructure.

Microsoft-led sessions explored moving beyond experimentation to focus on how utilities are turning unified data and AI into repeatable, operational outcomes. The takeaways from DTECH this year point to the next chapter of grid modernization—one defined by execution at scale, not pilots. 

What utility leaders reinforced: Keeping pace with change

Utility leaders consistently pointed to the increasing speed of change across the grid. Planning and operations are being pushed to respond faster as load growth becomes larger, more concentrated, and more volatile. Electrification is reshaping peak demand profiles, while capital programs are under pressure to deliver measurable value earlier—even as timelines continue to compress. 

At the distribution level, operational complexity is increasing. Distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, flexible demand, and new market programs are turning distribution systems into highly dynamic environments that demand better visibility, orchestration, and cybersecurity. Utilities are managing bidirectional power flows, evolving protection schemes, and the reality that smaller, distributed assets can have outsized system-level impacts—raising the bar for visibility, orchestration, and cybersecurity.

As a result, resilience is no longer episodic; it is a daily operating requirement. Fragmented data and manual coordination continue to limit situational awareness and slow response during major events.

Industry leaders were realistic about these constraints. Equipment lead times, workforce availability, and regulatory requirements mean that near-term reliability gains often come from improving how existing assets and systems are planned and operated. As a result, progress is increasingly measured by how effectively insights are translated into operational decisions, supported by secure and scalable platforms.

Trusted data as the foundation for AI in operations

Utilities generate vast amounts of data across assets, outages, telemetry, imagery, work management systems, and customer platforms. In many organizations, this data remains distributed across systems with inconsistent definitions, varying latency, and uneven governance.

These conditions slow analysis, create conflicting views of performance, and limit the ability to move from insight to action. Without a consistent and trusted data foundation, AI initiatives struggle to scale beyond isolated use cases. 

Microsoft is focused on helping utilities establish governed data foundations that support analytics and AI across planning, operations, field work, and customer engagement. By enabling scale across use cases—rather than building one‑off pipelines—utilities can align around shared definitions, apply consistent security controls, and collaborate without duplicative effort. 

This matters because the highest value use cases are inherently cross domain. Outage performance, capacity planning, and major event readiness all depend on data that spans systems and organizations. A unified data foundation allows AI to support these decisions with clarity, traceability, and operational relevance. 

From siloed AI solutions to agentic operations

Another notable theme at DTECH 2026 was the growing interest in agent-enabled workflows. Utilities are looking beyond standalone AI tools toward systems that can support multi-step workflows across planning, operations, and field execution, while maintaining appropriate oversight by subject matter experts across the workforce.

The focus is squarely on practical outcomes. Earlier risk identification, clearer paths from signal to action, and stronger coordination across teams are driving interest in these approaches, as utilities seek to move faster.

Human oversight remains foundational. Operators and engineers expect AI systems that surface options, explain their rationale, and reference trusted data—while operating within clearly defined governance boundaries. In regulated, safety‑critical environments, this human‑in‑the‑loop model must align with role‑based access, operational constraints, and established safeguards.

Partner innovation making modernization deployable

Grid modernization depends on strong ecosystem collaboration. No single entity can deliver it alone. What matters is interoperability—how solutions work together across planning, operations, outage restoration, field productivity, and major event response.

That focus was clear in the announcements from Microsoft and our partners at DTECH 2026:

• Dragos—Microsoft and Dragos announced an expanded partnership focused on helping organizations modernize and secure their cyber-physical operations. By combining Dragos’ OT threat intelligence and detection capabilities with Microsoft’s cloud, AI, and security platforms, utilities can strengthen the safety, reliability, and resilience of the critical systems that power businesses and communities. 
• GE Vernova on Azure—GridOS Data Fabric and DDLR are now on Microsoft Azure, combining GE Vernova’s operational expertise with Microsoft’s cloud, AI, and analytics.
• Hitachi—Hitachi Energy’s Ellipse EAM is being combined with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Fabric, Copilot, and Microsoft Foundry to create a unified solution that manages data, analytics, and business operations, supports asset operations, and provides visibility of equipment across entire networks for more reliable services, safer operations, and fewer emergency repairs.  
• Itron—The new Itron Intelligent Edge Operating System (IEOS) Connector for Microsoft 365 Copilot uses trusted grid-edge data to redefine grid edge intelligence by applying AI at scale to optimize operations, enhance predictive insights, and enrich customer experiences.
• Schneider Electric—Microsoft’s AI, cloud, and data capabilities are integrated in the One Digital Grid Platform, enabling operations to move from prediction to execution in minutes.

These developments reflect continued progress toward reference architectures and reusable patterns that reduce bespoke integration and support broader adoption across utility environments.

Security and resilience built into modernization

Security remains a core consideration as IT and OT environments converge and connectivity at the edge increases. Utility leaders emphasized the importance of approaches that function across hybrid architectures and reflect operational realities.

Identity, access management, monitoring, and governance must be consistently applied across cloud, edge, and on‑premises systems. Resilience improves when operators have timely visibility, clear decision paths, and automation that supports established operating practices.

What comes next

DTECH 2026 highlighted a clear direction for grid modernization; utilities are prioritizing:

• Trusted data foundations spanning IT and OT.
• AI and agent-enabled capabilities embedded in operational workflows.
• Secure architectures designed to support reliability, governance, and resilience.

Microsoft will continue to work alongside utilities and industry partners to advance these priorities and support grid operations that can adapt to increasing complexity while delivering reliable outcomes for customers and communities. 

Turn insight into action

• Explore the possibilities of AI transformation with Microsoft
• Read the latest International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook
• Learn how to achieve more in the energy and resources industry with trusted data and AI solutions from Microsoft
• Explore the Reinventing the Utility Playbook: AI Agents for Grid Growth, Storm Response, and the Workforce 2.0 DTECH 2026 session
• Learn more about the AI-Powered Utilities: The Next Wave of Innovation DTECH 2026 session

The post DTECH 2026: How Microsoft and our partners are accelerating AI innovation for utilities appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

At Microsoft, we see retail moving forward into a world where agents strengthen and streamline human action through automation and intelligence on tap. Cutting-edge agentic technology will enable retailers to move faster and smarter. But the emotional connection with the consumer, the trust, creativity, and empathy that define great brands, cannot be automated. Delivering authenticity at scale will rely on a workforce model that consciously centers and invigorates the collaborative human experience—one that sees agents as force multipliers for workers to deploy in pursuit of their best work. As one retail analyst put it, “Technology alone isn’t enough—real transformation requires rethinking how we work within human-plus-agentic teams.”³ Success in the next chapter in retail will accrue to the organizations who maximize the power of these human-agent teams—what we at Microsoft call a Frontier Firm. 

That’s why we believe the agentic future should be human-led, with automation embedded in key workflows and a return on intelligence that helps people move faster and smarter. Retail executives echo this vision: “AI tools can free up front-line employees to prioritize tasks that require a human touch, such as engaging with customers and designing stores.”⁴ Consumers will continue to seek out and reward authentic, down-to-earth experiences, even as they embrace AI for convenience. The retailers who win in 2026 and beyond will be those who combine the best of both worlds: the speed and precision of agents with the creativity, empathy, and expertise only humans can deliver.

How Microsoft agentic solutions are helping move retail forward

We are excited and proud to be leading the evolution of agentic retail with right-sized development options for every organization—whether they’re looking for a fully-configurable, pro-code development experience or a low-code/no-code, fully-managed environment. 

Microsoft Foundry enables professional developers to build, optimize, and govern sophisticated AI solutions that run at the edge or in the cloud. Retailers seeking deep customization benefit from the widest selection of foundation models on any cloud, including models tailored for the retail industry, open agent frameworks, vast integrations, enterprise scalability, and organization-wide observability and controls. For example, Foundry IQ helps organizations securely ground AI apps and agents on enterprise data stored in any location, while Foundry Tools allows agents to automate workflows and respond with real-time precision across more than 1,400 business systems like SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Shopify, Stripe, Adobe, and Dynamics 365. This enables retailers like The ODP Corporation and Bayer to drive business results with action-oriented and context-aware agents as part of their broader application landscape. 

Organizations looking to rapidly prototype conversational commerce and worker empowerment agents will appreciate Microsoft Copilot Studio easy low-code/no-code configurability and straightforward integrations. And for retailers looking for a turnkey experience with minimal time-to-value, we offer a curated group of managed agent templates in Copilot Studio that will help these organizations deploy enterprise-ready AI agents without starting from square one.

Each template comes preconfigured with proven logic, connectors, and workflows backed by rigorous evaluation, model tuning, and quality controls. Retailers can deploy agents with confidence knowing that Microsoft security, compliance, and lifecycle governance are built in. Native integration across Microsoft 365 and Power Platform makes it easy to embed intelligence into existing applications, automate workflows, and streamline data orchestration.

Together, these capabilities reduce implementation time, lower IT overhead, and accelerate time-to-value—quickly moving organizations from pilots to real, scalable outcomes.

Today, we are introducing three agents built specifically for retail: one for product discovery, one for catalog enrichment, and one for store operations. Each is designed to help retailers tame complexity, improve data quality, and deliver higher-value customer and employee experiences.

Personalize retail journeys with the personalized shopping agent

The personalized shopping agent template serves as a digital expert associate available across retail channels. It goes beyond basic search-and-scroll by delivering guided, natural language product discovery that helps the shopper feel like a knowledgeable store associate is assisting them.

Instead of returning loosely related results, the agent asks clarifying questions, interprets nuance, and offers informed recommendations that reflect real customer needs. Retailers can tune the agent’s voice, language, and style to match their brand, ensuring every interaction reinforces the retailer’s identity and expertise.

Whether customers are searching for a fragrance that evokes a memory, planning an outfit for a themed event, or finding the right running shoes for an upcoming marathon, the agent engages in thoughtful conversation to guide decision making. Built on Microsoft Foundry’s enterprise grade AI stack—including Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models, Azure Machine Learning prompt flow, and Microsoft Fabric—the agent delivers personalized discovery at scale while remaining easy to integrate across web, mobile, and in-store experiences.

Its headless and tailless architecture allows retailers to pull from multiple systems and maintain a consistent, branded experience anywhere it is deployed. Cross-sell and upsell intelligence, financing suggestions, and even in-home service recommendations help retailers drive higher conversion and customer satisfaction.

Leading retailers are already putting this to work. Ralph Lauren’s “Ask Ralph” virtual stylist runs on this agent template, with comprehensive knowledge of the brand’s products, design philosophy, craftsmanship, and history, emulating the immersive experience of a Ralph Lauren flagship store.

Catalog enrichment: From messy product data to meaningful content

For more than three decades, retailers optimized their product catalogs for three-word search terms. But conversational search shines when it can query catalogs full of detailed, multi-dimensional product attributes. Retailers eager to surface the perfect personalized product suggestions to their customers can quickly improve the accuracy and relevance of conversational search results by augmenting their catalogs with a rich set of attributes for each product.

Modernizing and enriching product descriptions is no small task, however. Even if a retailer could resolve all the gaps and inconsistencies in their legacy product catalogs, manual data entry, inconsistent vendor information, and the scale of product refresh cycles promise ongoing operational friction and disappointing conversational search results.

The catalog enrichment agent template solves this by automatically cleaning, completing, and standardizing product information. Designed for simplicity and accessibility, the configured agent integrates directly into familiar environments like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, where merchandisers can review flagged items, approve updates, and act quickly as product offerings change.

Because the agent does not rely on a fixed schema or centralized data source, it can ingest product details from images, PDFs, structured tables, or unstructured documents. It then transforms that information into clean, brand-aligned catalog entries. The agent can work independently or alongside existing systems, giving retailers a flexible, modular way to improve data quality without large-scale re-platforming.

Once data is ingested, the agent extracts key attributes, applies brand guidelines, aligns content to the retailer’s taxonomy, and generates consistent product descriptions. It can process thousands of products—flagging low-confidence entries and producing review-ready outputs—before teams even start their day.

As merchandisers provide corrections, the agent learns and improves over time. Whether operating in auto approval mode or with human review, it dramatically reduces manual workload and improves the accuracy of product data. The result is better product discovery, higher customer confidence, and more scalable catalog operations.

“With Microsoft’s catalog enrichment template forming the backbone of our personalized shopping experiences, we can turn product details into meaningful insights that help shoppers discover styles in real time, receive tailored recommendations, and explore complete looks. It’s a powerful step forward in our commitment to delivering service that’s as dynamic our brand.”  

David Torrecilla, Head of Innovation at Guess

Store operations: Turning real world signals into real time action

The store operations agent template is a prebuilt, low-code solution that converts real-world signals into timely, actionable guidance for every store. It continuously monitors external factors—weather, events, holidays, and seasonality—and triggers operational recommendations when conditions change.

Store managers can review, approve, or refine these suggestions, and the agent improves with each piece of feedback. Once approved, the agent orchestrates execution through Microsoft Teams Planner, creating and assigning tasks with clear instructions, due times, and progress tracking. This keeps teams aligned, improves task compliance, and shortens the signal-to-action cycle.

The agent includes integration stubs and templates so retailers can connect to inventory, shipping, workforce planning, and other systems. It can be tailored to specific policies, playbooks, KPIs, and regional requirements, enabling day-to-day operational precision.

Strandbags, the largest specialty luggage and accessories retailer in Australia and New Zealand, is one of the early adopters. Their teams are using the store operations agent template to act more quickly on local insights and stay ahead in a dynamic retail environment.

Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply is also deploying the store operations agent template in locations across six U.S. states.

 “Beyond efficiently aggregating data, the agent provides valuable insights into community events, sales trends, and actionable recommendations for improving store performance. A key aspect of this agent is its integration into our ecosystem, allowing us to continuously refine its capabilities and enhance the value it delivers.” 

Steven Potratz, Senior Learning and Development Leader at Murdoch’s

Shirley Gao, Chief Digital and Information Officer of PacSun, shared that the objective of the store operations agent template deployment underway in PacSun’s retail locations is “to embed AI at the core of store operations, equipping associates with predictive intelligence, actionable workflows, and real-time business alerts. This enhances operational visibility and accelerates data-driven decision-making at the store level. Through continuous co-creation and adaptation to our unique processes, we ensure AI delivers meaningful impact for both our business and our people.” 

Transforming retail end-to-end

Every product, every collection, and every campaign is part of a broader narrative retailers use to connect with customers. But delivering those experiences consistently requires precision, context, and agility.

Microsoft’s retail agent templates are designed to make that possible.

• The personalized shopping agent template turns product discovery into a tailored conversation.
• The catalog enrichment agent template ensures foundational data is accurate, complete, and aligned to the brand.
• The store operations agent template transforms signals into action and orchestrates execution at scale.

Together, they form a connected ecosystem that supports the full arc of retail storytelling—from data to discovery to delivery. By pairing agentic automation with human judgment, these solutions help retailers scale their brand, delight customers, and achieve greater return on intelligence (ROI).

All three agents are available today in Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft Marketplace.

Retail is entering a new era—one built on intelligence, speed, and empowered teams. I’m excited to partner with you as we take the next step forward.

Join me on Monday, Jan 12, 2026 on the Big Ideas stage at NRF 2026 for Becoming a Frontier Firm: Unlocking the New ROI—Return on Intelligence as I explore the journey to an agentic future. 

Hear from Kathleen Mitford, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Industry Marketing in conversation with Adobe and The Coca-Cola Company about the future of retail growth on the Big Ideas stage. Don’t miss Personalization at Scale: Using AI to unlock the next phase of growth on Sunday, January 11, 2026.  

Enjoy an illuminating fireside chat, The future of an icon: Ralph Lauren’s journey of heritage, innovation and partnership with Microsoft on the keynote stage on Monday, January 12, 2026. Featuring Shelley Bransten, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Industry Solutions and David Lauren, Chief Branding and Innovation Officer at Ralph Lauren, this session will explore how iconic brand heritage and digital creativity converge to shape the future of luxury retail. 

Interested to learn how you can jump-start your agentic future? Visit us at Booth #4503 to experience:

• AI-powered shopping journeys.
• Intelligent merchandising and catalog enrichment.
• Dynamic supply chain orchestration.
• AI-assisted workforce solutions.
• Customer stories across throughout in-booth demos and theater that showcase the ROI of AI and agents today.

Explore solutions and more

• Find out how you can start deploying agents across your organization with Microsoft Agent Factory. 
• Learn how agentic AI and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are helping organizations shape the future of retail.
• See Forrester’s Predictions 2026: Digital Commerce.
• Discover how your organization can become a Frontier Firm at a Microsoft AI Tour event near you.
• Explore key retail AI use cases, customer stories, partner solutions, and more on the Microsoft for Retail homepage.
• Follow Microsoft Cloud on LinkedIn.
• Read about how Microsoft is setting the standard for responsible AI practices.

¹ Morgan Stanley, Here Come the Shopping Bots, December 8, 2025.

² Adobe, Adobe: Cyber Monday Hits Record $14.25 Billion in Online Spending with Over $1 Billion Driven by Buy Now Pay Later, December 2, 2025.

³ Slalom, Industry Outlook, Retail Industry Trends 2026.

⁴ Snowflake, The AI Tipping Point: What Retail Leaders Need to Know for 2025, February 4, 2025.

The post Return on intelligence: The human edge in an agentic era appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Microsoft for automotive

Trusted solutions for the automotive industry

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Change and disruption were the norm

We saw original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers announce investment strategies and product re-alignments across electric vehicle (EV), hybrid, and internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered segments. We witnessed new software-defined vehicle (SDV) platform developments like the introduction of BMW’s Neue Klasse SDV platform, and saw exciting in-vehicle experiences that go beyond traditional screen-projection with embedded and secure vehicle operating systems that offer AI-powered productivity and interactivity as seen with Mercedes-Benz.

There were advances across all areas of vehicle development as the industry grappled with consumer sensitivity around cost, product availability, and a desire for more personalized and connected experiences inside the vehicle.

From hardware to software

As software continues to drive new vehicle development—approaching the scale of billions of lines of code—its importance to vehicle engineering has become critical, even regulated with requirements to maintain software fitness and security over the vehicle lifecycle. Automakers and suppliers are embracing this shift, however, and recognize that with a focus on software and data, they can now offer new products and services that drive unique differentiation and can improve customer value, loyalty, sales, and service. The adoption of cloud and AI technologies has added a force multiplier to this transformation across the entire industry.

While hardware will always be in the mix, we continue to see a focus on reducing the number of vehicle domain controllers and consolidating compute.

Less is more

Less is indeed more, and the goal for automakers when it comes to time to market. With aggressive plans for new vehicle introductions over the next two to three years, OEMs and their suppliers are creating paths to shorten the time it takes to introduce new vehicles and products to market. This is pushing cycles from a typical 48 to 60 months down to 24 to 36 months to remain competitive.

The AI push is real

Across all industries, and especially within automotive, the adoption of AI and AI agents has enabled improvements in design, requirements management, coding, and vehicle engineering functions, leading to enterprise efficiency, rapid innovation, customer satisfaction, and shorter overall development times.

CES 2026—The stage is set

With that said, the stage is now set for 2026 and the annual technology-infused tour de force at CES 2026. For years, CES has been known for highlighting both current and inspiring future technology. This is also true for automotive at CES 2026 as evidenced by the population of exhibitors and attendees over the past few years. It will be interesting to see how that landscape has evolved for this year’s event given the new dynamics at play.

Microsoft for automotive at CES 2026

For the fifth consecutive year, Microsoft will showcase its impact on automotive as the secure technology platform powering the next frontier of automotive innovation. With our cloud and AI solutions, along with our ecosystem of acceleration partners, Microsoft is transforming processes across the automotive “V” model—from requirements and engineering to development and testing.

At CES 2026, we are particularly focused on the transformation within digital engineering, helping our automotive and mobility customers establish strong software capabilities. This includes areas such as SDVs, embedded software, vehicle advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and autonomy. In addition, meeting OEMs brand differentiation requirements through unique in-vehicle experiences with a focus on the digital cockpit is another core spotlight.

Our customers and partners also seek our differentiation around enterprise-grade security, global-scale cloud, AI copilots integrated across engineering workflows, and an open ecosystem vs. vertically locked platforms. 

At CES 2026, Microsoft and our partners are demonstrating how AI-powered engineering and in-vehicle intelligence are converging to accelerate SDV development and redefine the driver experience.

Digital engineering

Digital engineering demands cloud infrastructure that can scale globally, adapt in real time, and deliver consistent performance across increasingly complex workloads—from AI inference and data-intensive analytics to embedded development and full vehicle simulation. Recent Microsoft Azure innovations remove longstanding compute and operational bottlenecks by supporting heterogeneous architectures such as Arm64, graphics processing units (GPUs), and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), enabling end-to-end engineering from chip to cloud. Elastic scaling empowers globally distributed teams with cloud-native CI/CD pipelines and real-time analytics, while high-performance computing accelerates software-defined vehicle (SDV) development through advanced simulation, validation, and software-in-the-loop testing—allowing teams to move faster, validate earlier, and bring intelligent systems to market with greater confidence. 

We shared some exciting new announcements in both digital engineering and in-vehicle innovation below: 

AMD and Siemens: AMD is providing new engineering support for OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with the AMD VAS stack running on Microsoft Azure, enabling virtualization of development environments. This integration enables systems-level simulation to support earlier engineering validation efforts aimed at improving efficiency, reducing development risks with SDV development, and reducing time to market. Learn more about the AMD announcement.

With this capability, Siemens will integrate their PAVE360™ digital twin simulation environment into the AMD VAS stack on Azure, providing developer support for AMD compute and graphics technologies. Discussing this and other topics further at CES 2026, Siemens will also feature a panel lineup with President and Chief Executive Officer Roland Busch joined by executives from NVIDIA, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Commonwealth Fusion. The panel will share a dialog on the impact of AI in transforming the physical world to transform manufacturing, infrastructure, and transportation.

ETAS: As a leading provider of innovative solutions for the development of automotive software, emergency technical assistance service (ETAS) brings its core calibration suite to Azure, enabling automotive engineers to accelerate SDV development through cloud-based engineering tools. The ETAS toolchain on Azure enables OEMs to move software development activities to start an earlier point in time, a term known as “shift-left,” which enables late-stage vehicle development processes to be performed earlier—saving time, improving quality, and enabling faster iteration cycles. Read the blog to learn more.

KPIT: KPIT will demonstrate their Next-Generation Agentic AI Solution Suite at CES 2026—a flexible, cloud-based tool designed to make vehicle software development faster, more reliable, and cost-effective for automakers. By using advanced AI on Azure, KPIT helps OEMs improve the way they design, and build connected and self-driving vehicles. This technology provides more efficient processes to update vehicle software, diagnose and resolve problems more quickly, and deliver better experiences for drivers, leading to higher quality vehicles and more satisfied customers. Learn more.

Neural Concept: Neural Concept focuses on improving vehicle aerodynamics, a critical factor for enhancing vehicle performance, energy efficiency, and reducing development costs. As development timelines in the automotive industry continue to shorten, the demand for data-driven approaches that complement or replace traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) workflows become increasingly important. By utilizing the MIT DrivAerNet++ dataset—which contains 8,000 vehicle designs and extensive CFD information, Neural Concept supports advanced research and development in engineering. These innovations empower automakers to achieve design cycles that are 30% shorter. Learn more about Neural Concept at CES 2026.

PTC: Considering speed to market, PTC announced a collaboration with Lamborghini S.p.A to improve overall product lifecycle through their centralized data foundation that connects design, engineering, and operations with enhanced AI capabilities. Also, through their collaboration with Microsoft, PTC will demonstrate a new engineering change management solution—an AI-powered agent to streamline the engineering workflow that has broad applicability even beyond automotive. Meet PTC at CES 2026. 

Renesas: Continuing with the theme of digital engineering and SDV, Renesas, an advanced semiconductor solutions provider, announced an industry first integration to create a vendor-neutral SDV-as-a-Service platform, powered by Azure along with Visual Studio Code integration, GitHub CI/CD pipelines, and Microsoft Copilot AI. The Renesas RoX DevStudio enables OEMs and other partners with cloud-based tools to architect, develop, simulate, test, and deploy SDV architectures, supporting the entire v-model. Discover more with the Renesas blog.

Digital Cockpit and in-vehicle experiences

The rapidly growing in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) market is transforming with new AI-powered experiences improving driver safety, comfort, and even productivity.

Bosch: In collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA, Bosch is introducing in-vehicle cockpit innovation at CES 2026. The Bosch AI cockpit, launched as the “AI extension platform,” will provide compute power to enable AI capabilities on the edge to existing vehicle cockpit systems. This is significant in that automakers can use their existing hardware infrastructure in the vehicle. This new platform is powered by NVIDIA’s Drive Orin system-on-chip (SoC), delivering high-performance with only power and Ethernet interfaces, simplifying electrical and electronics (E/E) infrastructure while supporting modern vehicle computing needs. With this powerful platform and the integration of Microsoft Foundry and specialized cockpit features, Microsoft and Bosch are transforming the car into a mobile office without compromising driver safety. This combination not only enables access to Microsoft 365 applications productivity suite and intuitive voice command, but it integrates intelligently with other vehicle systems to prioritize safety and minimize distraction—like enabling adaptive cruise control while on a Microsoft Teams call—demonstrating a key use case for how AI will revolutionize the cockpit and driving experience. Learn more about Bosch innovations at CES 2026.

Cerence AI and NVIDIA: In another milestone collaboration with Cerence AI, NVIDIA, and Microsoft, Cerence announced Cerence xUI^tm , a new, hybrid, agentic intelligence solution for OEMs to meet rising demand for fast, edge/in-vehicle large language and small language model AI to power new in-car experiences operating in a connected or disconnected state. Cerence xUIalso enables access to Microsoft 365 applications productivity suite with multi-lingual, multimodal conversational language, supporting intelligent multi zonal support, so not only the driver, but also each individual passenger can talk to the car and have access to Microsoft 365 applications, using Microsoft security products and best practices. Learn more at CES 2026.

FORVIA: Building on the existing Microsoft Teams integration work from 2025, Appning by FORVIA collaborates further to bring AI-powered experiences enabled by Microsoft Foundry Tools to the Appning Apps market ecosystem. This collaboration supports advanced conversational interfaces, content, and services for personalized user experiences. Learn more.

TomTom: The location technology experts at TomTom combine their mapping and traffic intelligence data in a unique platform that gives OEMs ultimate flexibility in creating unique, branded, and connected experiences delivered in weeks instead of months. The platform also builds on the Microsoft Cloud and generative AI capabilities into the TomTom AI Agent.

Microsoft for automotive and our partner ecosystem

In addition to the partners making announcements at CES 2026, we will showcase a vibrant partner ecosystem supporting automotive and mobility including:

Microsoft is committed to partnering with OEMs and suppliers to accelerate SDV development, modernize engineering, and deliver intelligent, differentiated in-vehicle experiences. Learn more about Microsoft for automotive.

The post CES 2026: Powering the next frontier in automotive appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Events like Industrial Transformation Asia Pacific (ITAP) 2025 and Microsoft Ignite 2025 are critical moments to meet customers where they are—bringing together diverse business and technical decision makers to explore what’s possible today, while introducing new technological breakthroughs that redefine tomorrow’s potential. At ITAP 2025, in Singapore, the spotlight is on how a vibrant ecosystem of partners is working with Microsoft to accelerate AI adoption and drive manufacturing excellence across Asia—proving that the future of industrial innovation is built on collaboration. Microsoft Ignite 2025, in San Francisco, California, extended this momentum to a global stage, showcasing cutting-edge AI, data, and cloud innovations that help organizations reimagine their operations end-to-end. Together, ITAP 2025 and Microsoft Ignite 2025 don’t just reflect where the industry is headed—they actively propel thinking forward, shaping the next industrial era.

Partner-led innovation on display

This year, the ITAP 2025 show floor was energized by partner-led demos that are reshaping the manufacturing value chain. Siemens, Sight Machine, and SymphonyAI each brought forward compelling demonstrations of how their technologies—integrated with Microsoft platforms—are delivering real-world impact:

• Siemens: Showcased “Realize AI-powered digital threads for manufacturing,” featuring NX X and Teamcenter X demos. These AI manufacturing solutions, centered around Rolls Royce engine engineering, highlighted how generative AI and digital thread technologies are driving innovation and collaboration in design, engineering, and product lifecycle management.
• SymphonyAI: Demonstrated “Improve operational efficiency and performance with actionable AI,” integrating SymphonyAI IRIS Foundry with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams. Operators can now query production performance or asset anomalies in natural language and receive instant, contextual responses—highlighting how AI-powered insights trigger maintenance actions and optimize throughput.
• Sight Machine: Delivered “Unlock rapid AI transformation with a complete Industrial AI stack,” illustrating how manufacturers can break down silos and accelerate their journey to AI-powered enterprise operations.

The Industry Hub at Microsoft Ignite 2025 was alive with partner solutions that displayed what becomes possible when AI, data, and cloud come together at scale. Hexagon, Krones, and PTC showcased compelling demonstrations of how their AI-powered solutions, alongside Microsoft, are transforming industry processes:

• Hexagon: Demonstrated “Scaling intelligent robotics with simulation-driven AI,” featuring Hexagon’s AEON humanoid powered by Microsoft Azure and NVIDIA. Scalable AI training, governed deployment, and rapid simulation-backed adaptation for new stock keeping units (SKUs) help manufacturers boost speed, quality, and safety while reducing risk.
• Krones: With SoftServe and Ansys, delivered “Reinvent beverage production with AI-powered digital twins,” using Azure and advanced graphics processing unit (GPU) technologies to cut simulation times from hours to minutes. This enables real-time optimization, autonomous decision-making, and more sustainable, efficient beverage lines.
• PTC: Highlighted “Unifying the digital thread across engineering, manufacturing, and service,” with AI-powered PTC solutions on Microsoft’s cloud. By aggregating data into a connected digital thread, customers can quickly surface issues, analyze real-time performance, and accelerate resolution across the product lifecycle.

Together, these solutions—built on data, AI, and cloud platforms—enable manufacturers to modernize legacy systems, unify their data, and scale AI beyond pilots to production with greater speed and flexibility than ever before.

Driving thought leadership—with partners

Across these events, the Microsoft Theater became a hub for knowledge sharing, hosting 26 sessions that brought together subject matter experts, partners, and industry leaders. Sessions explored practical use cases—from AI-powered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) transformation and real-time data insights to frontline worker empowerment—demonstrating how technology, when combined with deep domain expertise from partners, is delivering real-world outcomes. This joint leadership validates emerging best practices, while also aligning Microsoft and its partner ecosystem around a shared vision for industrial AI, giving customers clearer roadmaps, greater confidence in their technology investments, and a stronger sense of what’s possible when we innovate together.

Notable speakers from ABB, Amadeus, AVEVA, Hexagon, Krones, LS Electric, Neudesic, NVIDIA, OpsMate, PTC, S&P Global, Siemens, Sight Machine, SymphonyAI, and Wandlebots shared their perspectives, reinforcing the message that industrial AI transformation is a team sport.

Putting an industrial frontier vision into practice

The ITAP Tech Summit 2025, themed “Human-led, AI-powered: Building agentic factory operations,” attracted more than 125 industry decision-makers, going beyond a traditional session—giving attendees a first-hand experience of building and interacting with agentic solutions. Participants learned how to design agentic operations using Microsoft AI, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and partner solutions connected to internal manufacturing execution system (MES), ERP, and other critical OT systems. The session combined reference architectures, live walkthroughs, and best practices, empowering organizations to start their own frontier journeys with the support of a robust partner ecosystem.

The latest AI innovations from Microsoft are helping manufacturers modernize operations and unlock new value. These AI manufacturing solutions are not theoretical—they are solving the most crucial industrial challenges.

Advancements

• Adaptive cloud for manufacturing: Companies like Husqvarna are modernizing legacy infrastructure with scalable, secure, and flexible cloud-based operations. This approach integrates AI and Internet of Things (IoT) to enable future-ready production environments.
• Agentic ERP transformation: Microsoft Dynamics 365 is streamlining supply chain management and resource allocation, giving manufacturers the agility to respond to market shifts with speed and precision.
• Copilot for Frontline Workers: Intelligent agent orchestration in Teams is empowering frontline employees with real-time data, proactive alerts, and seamless collaboration.
• Generative AI for Field Service: Intelligent scheduling, predictive maintenance, and real-time technician support improve service outcomes and operational efficiency.

Announcements

• Microsoft Agent 365: Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2025, Microsoft’s new control plane for AI agents helps organizations securely deploy, govern, and manage agents at scale—streamlining industrial workflows by integrating AI into existing systems to improve efficiency and reduce downtime.
• Microsoft Azure Copilot enhancements: An upgraded, more agentic Azure Copilot that assists with designing, deploying, and operating cloud environments and applications. It can generate architectures, scripts, and configurations, and help troubleshoot workloads running on Azure.
• Microsoft Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ: Together, these new IQ capabilities create intelligence, data, and knowledge layers across Microsoft 365, Fabric, and Foundry—so copilots and agents can act with organizational context, a consistent view of data, and governed access to content. For manufacturers, this means clearer visibility into how workflows, a unified backbone for data and knowledge, and faster decisions in workforce planning, production, maintenance, and quality.

Looking ahead: Empowering the future together

Across the globe, manufacturers are seeing the benefits of a collaborative approach. In Southeast Asia, DMG Mori’s adoption of Azure and AI-powered solutions from partner Tulip has resulted in a 66.6% improvement in product quality, increased reliability, and measurable gains in data efficiency and consistency. These outcomes are a testament to the power of partnership in driving operational digitization, transformation, and intelligent automation.

At Microsoft Ignite 2025, manufacturers saw similar real-world impact as partners showcased AI-powered use cases across the value chain—from Hexagon’s AEON humanoid on Azure and NVIDIA accelerating safer, more autonomous industrial robotics, to Krones’ Azure-based digital twin with SoftServe and Ansys cutting simulation times from hours to minutes, to PTC’s Azure- and AI-enabled digital thread improving engineering speed and quality.

Whether in Southeast Asia, Germany, or California, Microsoft’s commitment to customers is rooted in partnership. By combining visionary thought leadership, deep partner collaboration, and immersive technology experiences, we are empowering the future of smart, sustainable manufacturing. The momentum from ITAP 2025 and Microsoft Ignite 2025 is just the beginning—together with our partners, we look forward to accelerating AI adoption and frontier innovation across every region.

Start your industrial AI journey

Explore how our partners are leading the way in industrial AI transformation. Connect with them to discover solutions, best practices, and opportunities to accelerate your own AI journey.

Industrial AI is delivering real-world impact. Learn how with the Return on Intelligence e-book.

The post Partners powering AI transformation globally: Agentic solutions in action at ITAP 2025 and Microsoft Ignite 2025 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Healthcare leaders today are navigating a landscape of escalating cyberthreats and increasing operational complexity. Cybersecurity is not just a technical requirement—it’s essential to building patient trust, ensuring care continuity, and enabling future innovation in healthcare.

At the 2025 Scottsdale Institute CISO Summit, top security leaders gathered to share real stories, big challenges, and practical solutions for keeping patient data safe in a rapidly changing world. As a follow-up, they released a report on the Future-Proofing Healthcare Cybersecurity: AI, Cloud Transformation, and Capabilities for Tomorrow.

Here are a few highlights:

Why cybersecurity matters more than ever

Healthcare is an often-targeted and heavily regulated industry with patient outcomes at stake.

• Cyber threats are evolving fast. AI and cloud transformation are opening new doors for care, but also new risks. Cybercriminals are getting smarter, and healthcare organizations must keep pace to protect sensitive information and help ensure patient safety.
• It’s personal. Healthcare leaders reminded us that every security decision impacts real people—patients, families, and staff. The goal is always to deliver the best care, safely.

What healthcare teams need to know about cybersecurity

1. Collaboration is critical

CEOs, CIOs, and CISOs must work together. Innovation and security go hand-in-hand, and strong partnerships help organizations stay ahead of threats.

2. AI opportunities and challenges

AI can make healthcare smarter and more efficient, but it also introduces new risks. Leaders must ask tough questions about how AI tools use data, how they’re trained, and how to keep them secure.

3. Training and upskilling

Investing in technology is only half of the battle. Staff need ongoing training to use new tools safely and effectively. Creative incentives—like paid training time or career pathways—help teams grow and adapt.

4. Breaking down silos

Legacy structures can slow progress. Integrated teams and cross-functional collaboration are key to finding and fixing vulnerabilities quickly.

5. Third-party risk management

Vendor relationships are more complex than ever. Organizations must raise the bar for vendor assessments, ensure business continuity, and educate users about risks.

6. Resilience and response

Prevention is important, but detection and rapid response are essential. AI-powered tools can help spot suspicious behavior, but human oversight remains crucial.

Patient safety, care continuity, and trust in healthcare depend on getting cybersecurity right

Healthcare organizations face a critical inflection point. Success will require:

• Embracing AI-powered defenses
• Building stronger networks among security professionals
• Accelerating vendor sophistication
• Developing agile incident response protocols

Security-first in action: St. Luke’s Health Network

For St. Luke’s University Health Network, protecting patient data is key to delivering great care. Serving people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey at 13 hospitals and 607 practices, including a number of specialties, it has a sizeable data estate to safeguard.

Succeeding at that vital mission got easier when St. Luke’s reduced its number of security tools and gained dramatically greater visibility into the data it needs to maintain security.

It replaced several third-party security solutions with Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Microsoft Defender for Office 365, adding to its Microsoft Security solution base for a unified security posture that helps security teams do what they do best: protect St. Luke’s from an ever-evolving threat landscape.

I believe that is likely the first company on the cusp of creating the predictive model that will take us past threat detection and enable threat prevention. That’s why we trust Microsoft.

–David Finkelstein, Chief Information Security Officer, St. Luke’s University Health Network

Let’s build a secure future for healthcare, together

At Microsoft, we’re focused on helping organizations consolidate fragmented security capabilities and apply intelligence to deliver better outcomes. Since launching the Secure Future Initiative (SFI) in November 2023, Microsoft has mobilized the equivalent of more than 34,000 engineers to mitigate risk and improve security for Microsoft and our customers.¹

Guided by three security principles—secure by design, by default, and in operations—we have made measurable progress in the areas of culture, governance, and our six engineering pillars. Still, there is more to do, and teams across the company are working to improve the security of every product, address learnings from every incident, and continuously improve our methods and practices.

Microsoft has been a leader for years in developing AI technologies in accordance with responsible AI principles designed to meet compliance requirements, protect data and systems, and maintain customer trust.

Strengthen cybersecurity and compliance in the era of AI

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Learn how AI can help fortify healthcare security and compliance

• Download the healthcare security e-book.
• Check out the healthcare security and compliance infographic.
• For insights on how to stay ahead of emerging challenges and threats with AI and security for AI, explore the 2025 AI in Healthcare Decision Brief.
• Explore Microsoft security solutions.
• Follow our cybersecurity updates on Microsoft Security LinkedIn and on X @MSFTSecurity.
• Read the full Scottsdale Institute CISO 2025 Summit report.

¹ November 2025 Secure Future Initiative progress report, Microsoft

The post Future-proofing healthcare cybersecurity: What every leader should know appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Every patient image tells a story, and radiologists play a critical role in unlocking insights from the pixels to inform downstream care. By delivering timely, accurate, and complete reports, radiology teams help bridge the gap between diagnosis and action, accelerating time to treatment and supporting better outcomes. Microsoft is deepening its commitment to healthcare by working closely with radiologists to deliver a unified AI experience for their reporting workflow. As radiologists face increasing demands for speed, accuracy, and efficiency in reporting, this is a pivotal moment for helping them unlock new levels of productivity and efficiency through generative, multimodal, and agentic AI.

At the 2025 Radiological Society of North America Conference and Annual Meeting (RSNA 2025), Microsoft is extending the value of its flagship AI clinical assistant, Microsoft Dragon Copilot, specifically for radiologists. Now in preview, Dragon Copilot integrates directly into familiar workflows to help radiology teams focus on their interpretations.*

Serving as a companion for PowerScribe One, Microsoft’s leading reporting solution and trusted by thousands of radiologists, it delivers a unified workflow that streamlines reporting, surfaces information, and automates tasks.

Delivering generative, multimodal, and agentic AI without disrupting existing workflows

Every day, radiologists face a relentless tide of images, data, and documentation—each with varying degrees of complexity and urgency. And every moment a radiologist spends wrestling with fragmented technology is a missed opportunity to make a difference when it matters most.

This challenge extends into the AI landscape where fragmentation occurs when tools address narrow problems but create extra steps and poor integration into broader clinical workflows. Yet, hope is on the horizon. With many radiologists relying on the proven capabilities of PowerScribe One, like speech recognition to accurately dictate their report content and generative AI for generating draft impressions, organizations are looking for ways to integrate AI without altering the entire reporting experience.

For radiologists, Dragon Copilot works with PowerScribe One to deliver generative, multimodal, and agentic AI in a secure, scalable, and extensible way. It brings cloud-native features and AI directly into the radiologist’s workflow. By integrating with PowerScribe One, Dragon Copilot can further streamline report creation without interrupting the radiologist’s interpretation.

As we embrace the next frontier of AI, we know that having cloud-based solutions that work seamlessly with our existing products and systems is paramount. Having Dragon Copilot as a companion for PowerScribe One gives me confidence that I can test and benefit from the latest AI advancements with minimal disruptions and distractions.

—Sean Cleary, MD, Vice Chair of Informatics for Imaging Sciences University of Rochester Medical Center

AI capabilities tailored for radiologists

Prior report summarization: Radiologists often rely on prior reports to provide essential context for interpreting current studies. Prior report summarization in Dragon Copilot distills relevant prior reports and associated metadata into concise bullets, helping improve speed and accuracy in diagnostics. It assists the radiologists in interpretation of the current exam by clearly highlighting findings from prior reports requiring follow-up or ongoing attention.

Chat with credible sources: During an interpretation, radiologists may have questions or need to do additional research on a specific topic. A chat experience in Dragon Copilot routes questions to the appropriate agent or plugin to deliver relevant, reliable responses backed by credible sources with patient context—helping radiologists work more efficiently and intelligently without having to toggle between windows and other applications.

Report optimization for billing and beyond: Dragon Copilot can use third-party AI insights from partners to check the report content to help radiologists improve accuracy and quality, helping to prevent downstream issues like claim denials. By surfacing important details and helpful reminders directly inside the reporting workflow, radiology teams can optimize their reports for billing and beyond.

AI draft report content: With Dragon Copilot, organizations can accelerate the path to intelligent, draft-first reporting by integrating self-developed and third-party multimodal AI models. Radiologists can receive AI-generated draft report content from image analysis, which they can then review, test, and validate.

Accelerating innovation with new models and a rich partner ecosystem

Many organizations are experimenting with testing, fine-tuning, and building AI models tailored to their specific needs. With the rise of multimodal AI models that can analyze medical imaging, genomics, clinical records, and more, customers and partners are leading the next wave of innovation and exploring new use cases.

Collaborating on this work allows us to assess models like CXRReportGen that support grounded report generation based on image analysis from chest X-rays. With these new capabilities comes the challenge of how to surface model output into clinical workflows in ways that can add value. This has given us the opportunity to collaborate on AI interoperability with Microsoft in concert with other partners like Epic and Sectra to test how multimodal AI can work across systems to optimize clinical workflows and improve patient care.

—Dr. Richard Bruce, Professor and Vice Chair of Informatics, Department of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Microsoft Foundry offers a growing catalog of more than 50 first- and third-party healthcare AI models across modalities like radiology, pathology, dermatology, and protein analysis. Key models include MedImageInsight for image embedding, MedImageParse for segmentation, and CXRReportGen for drafting imaging reports.

Building on this foundation, Microsoft now provides premium versions of two proprietary AI models—CXRReportGen Premium and MedImageInsight Premium—trained on high-value datasets for superior accuracy and task-specific performance. These models allow developers and ISVs to create advanced imaging solutions without starting from scratch, supporting use cases such as image quality checks, image-to-image search, exam parameter classification, and metadata analysis.

Most importantly, our partners are also pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and offering radiology-specific AI apps and agents that can surface directly in Dragon Copilot.

• Lunit, a global leader in AI-powered cancer screening and diagnostics, brings advanced AI-powered image analysis for mammography exams to Dragon Copilot, allowing radiologists to receive real-time insights directly within their reporting workflow. Lunit’s comprehensive breast screening data assists radiologists in classifying and correlating abnormalities. By integrating Lunit’s algorithms, Dragon Copilot helps surface critical findings and optimize report accuracy without disrupting clinical interpretation—supporting diagnostic efficiency and better patient care.
• Zotec extends the value of Dragon Copilot by integrating revenue cycle management and billing intelligence directly into the radiologist’s workflow, helping ensure reports are complete, compliant, and satisfy quality measures before final sign-off. This seamless connection reduces the risk of missed billing information and the need for addenda, saving time and improving reimbursement accuracy. By making Zotec’s expertise available, Dragon Copilot empowers radiology teams to focus on clinical care while automating complex administrative tasks.

Lunit and Zotec are part of a broader ecosystem of partners bringing new AI innovations to Dragon Copilot customers. The collaborative innovation between Microsoft and its partners keeps solutions adaptable, secure, and tailored to the evolving needs of healthcare professionals.

Expanding what cloud, data, and AI can do for radiology

The power of our ecosystem extends beyond Dragon Copilot. At RSNA 2025, we’re extending that innovation across the broader Microsoft Azure ecosystem, showcasing partners who are transforming imaging workflows and data management in the cloud.

• Merge by Merative, from first click to final read, accelerates imaging workflows in the cloud.
• CitiusTech helps organizations consolidate their medical imaging on Azure with their digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) migration suite.
• Qumulo allows for intelligent retention and lifecycle management of imaging data in one unified file system on Azure.
• Milvue delivers both automated X-ray measurements and pathology detection for chest and appendicular skeleton imaging, supporting both pediatric and adult patients.

PowerScribe One

Harness AI to achieve new levels of reporting accuracy and quality.

Learn more

Learn more about AI adoption in radiology

• See Dragon Copilot and our radiology solutions, including partner innovations, live at RSNA booth #1311.
• Not attending RSNA 2025? Contact your account executive to schedule a demo.
• For advice on how you can accelerate AI adoption in your organization, explore the 2025 AI in Healthcare Decision Brief.

*Dragon Copilot for radiology is currently in preview for PowerScribe One customers. 

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Achieving impact with premium AI models, practical tools, and real-world deployments

Healthcare leaders face unprecedented challenges: rising labor costs, clinician workforce shortages, and the pressure to deliver safer, faster, and more personalized care. Microsoft’s AI technologies represent a leap forward in how organizations can automate clinical workflows, extract actionable insights from multimodal data, and drive performance. As part of this effort, Microsoft is introducing proprietary healthcare AI models, now available in Microsoft Foundry, and healthcare AI model evaluator, a user-friendly tool available for download on GitHub that allows teams to compare and assess AI model performance.

Fueling innovation with a growing healthcare AI model catalog

In spring 2024, Microsoft introduced healthcare AI models in Foundry—a collection of cutting-edge open source multimodal medical imaging models specifically designed for testing, fine-tuning, and building AI solutions tailored to healthcare-specific tasks. Along with partner offerings, Microsoft introduced three foundation models—MedImageInsight, MedImageParse, and CXRReportGen—with the goal of minimizing the compute and data requirements typically needed to build multimodal models from scratch. A year and a half later, the catalog now features more than 50 first-party and third-party models for a range of modalities, including radiology, pathology, dermatology, protein, and more.

Now, Microsoft is introducing two new proprietary AI models, MedImageInsight Premium and CXRReportGen Premium that set new benchmarks for accuracy and sensitivity in clinical imaging.

MedImageInsight Premium supports imaging applications across X-rays, MRIs, dermatology, and pathology, delivering up to 7–15% higher accuracy and requiring less fine-tuning than its open-source counterpart. It allows for image quality assessment, classification, search, metadata analysis, outlier detection, and supports regulatory workflows such as institutional review board submissions for FDA compliance. CXRReportGen Premium, optimized for chest X-ray report generation, has been further trained with massive amounts of real-world data to help create higher quality reports more similar to those used in clinic.

Organizations across the healthcare ecosystem can use these proprietary models to help address real clinical needs across diverse healthcare environments.

Empowering confident model selection with a purpose-built evaluation tool for healthcare

To help ensure agentic AI delivers meaningful results in healthcare, organizations should select models that have demonstrated effectiveness for their specific tasks. Healthcare AI model evaluator, available now on GitHub, enables teams to test and validate model performance on relevant clinical tasks using their own data and in their own environment. Its intuitive and flexible interface allows organizations to create custom tests and designate human experts or AI models to evaluate the output. Purpose-built for healthcare needs, the evaluator supports evidence-based model selection to help reduce risk and build trust in AI.

Real-world use cases: Impact across diverse healthcare environments

Healthcare agent orchestrator, unveiled at Microsoft Build 2025 and available in the Microsoft Foundry Agent Catalog, features pre-configured agents with multi-agent orchestration and open-source customization options that aid in the creation of agents that coordinate complex workflows. Modular, general reasoners as well as specialized, multimodal AI agents work together to address tasks that could take hours.

Oxford University’s Department of Oncology, in collaboration with Microsoft, has built and deployed three TrustedMDT agents. The agents integrate with Microsoft Teams and summarize patient charts, determine cancer staging, and draft guideline-compliant treatment plans for review by tumor boards. An evaluation and pilot is due to begin at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in first quarter of 2026. If successful, Oxford hopes to expand into the live clinical pathway following the study’s conclusion, generating vital clinical evidence to support scaling across United Kingdom academic medical centers. Dr. Andrew Soltan MD PhD, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Academic Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Specialty Registrar in Medical Oncology at Oxford University Hospitals, shares his story at the Microsoft Ignite breakout session, From Code to Care: Empowering Healthcare with Agentic AI,​ on Thursday, November 20.

These achievements in agent development showcase the opportunity for impact and reach of agentic AI solutions in diverse healthcare environments—especially when task-specific agents are available for purchase and deployment by other healthcare organizations. In September 2025, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, buy, and deploy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents. Organizations can publish, monetize, and distribute their healthcare agents and solutions through the Marketplace, turning their expertise into scalable business opportunities.

The Atropos Evidence Agent, announced in October 2025 by Atropos Health, answers clinical questions within a physician’s workflow—without the physician even needing to ask a question. Whether it’s for pre-visit planning or during the encounter, the Atropos Evidence Agent draws from patient-level data and surfaces real-world evidence for the provider. Using the healthcare agent orchestrator multi-agent framework, the Atropos Evidence Agent synthesizes real-world data and scientific literature to proactively deliver personalized evidence to clinicians and answer complex questions in minutes without leaving the electronic health record (EHR) workflow. Learn more at their session, Ambient Evidence Automation at the Point of Care, in the Industry Showcase in the Microsoft Ignite Hub on Tuesday, November 18.

UiPath Maestro™ orchestrates specialized Foundry and UiPath agents to synthesize historical records with incidental findings from imaging studies. It transforms raw data into actionable insights that can reduce clinician workload, speed care delivery, and drive measurable impact. Hear their story at the Industry Showcase session, From Insight to Impact: How UiPath Agentic Automation and Azure AI Foundry are Redefining Care Processes, on Thursday, November 20.

From tumor boards workflows to personalized evidence with automated follow-up, these deployments underscore the power of AI for helping to enhance diagnostic speed, accuracy, and efficiency, while supporting safer, more informed care decisions.

Take action to lead the future of healthcare

Microsoft for Healthcare AI is more than a technology upgrade, it’s a practical, high-impact solution for healthcare organizations ready to lead in clinical innovation. With AI models, benchmarking tools, and multi-agent frameworks, leaders can automate workflows, improve patient outcomes, and drive safer care at scale.

• Attend the Microsoft Ignite 2025 sessions mentioned above, or join one or all three 75-minute labs at Ignite 2025, and learn hands-on how to work with healthcare AI models, extend Dragon Copilot with partner-built AI solutions, or see multi-agent orchestration in action.
• Visit Foundry today to access the healthcare AI model catalog and healthcare agent orchestrator.
• Download healthcare AI model evaluator from GitHub.

The future of healthcare is agentic, data-driven, and collaborative. Take the next step—evaluate, deploy, and scale Microsoft’s AI solutions and work towards advancing care delivery today.

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