• Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Expanded model diversity with Claude and next-gen OpenAI models available today
• General availability of Agent 365 on May 1 for $15 per user
• General availability of the new Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite on May 1 for $99 per user

Frontier Transformation is a holistic reimagining of business, aligning AI with human ambition to achieve an organization’s highest aspirations. It is the next evolution of AI Transformation — not only do we need to deliver efficiency and productivity, but we need to democratize intelligence and do more for humanity. Companies do not want or need more AI experimentation. They need AI that delivers real business outcomes and growth.

In my daily conversations with customers and partners, they typically question what the most important components of an AI solution are. Is it the model? Is it silicon? At Microsoft, we believe the two most essential elements of Frontier Transformation are Intelligence + Trust. Organizations need to harness their own unique work intelligence as they build agents and solutions; and all AI artifacts across their technology stack must be observed, managed and secured to ensure they are delivering value responsibly. 

Intelligence that shows up in real work 

I often say that zero-shot artifact creation is nothing more than a parlor trick. Models can reason over data, produce draft documents, presentations and spreadsheets, but they do not understand work. Real differentiation comes from intelligence — deep work context, embedded in the tools people already use. AI should amplify your intelligence but do so in a manner that protects your differentiation and unique value.

Work IQ amplifies an individual’s IQ by tapping into your organization’s IQ. It is the intelligence layer that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to know how you work, with whom you work, and the content upon which you collaborate. That is why Copilot is faster, more accurate and more trusted than solutions built on models and connectors alone.

This month, we are unleashing Work IQ with our next generation of agentic experiences in Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Employees will have an enhanced chat experience in Copilot with the ability to create and augment artifacts, and the power to build their own agents within the canvas they work in every day.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is model diverse by design. Rather than betting on a single model, we built a system that makes every model useful at work. Customers get the choice, performance and flexibility in an open, heterogenous environment.  Copilot leverages leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, operating openly across clouds and data services without locking customers in. Claude is now available in mainline chat in Copilot via the Frontier program, alongside the latest generation of OpenAI models.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3 is not just a singular release of new capabilities but rather a commitment to continuous innovation. We will bring frontier capabilities with enterprise promises for our customers in an open and model diverse manner. Another great example of this is Copilot Cowork, which is in research preview. Built in close collaboration with Anthropic, we are bringing the technology that powers Claude Cowork into Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable long-running, multi-step work that unfolds over time.  Click here to learn about our Wave 3 news in more detail.

These announcements come as our customers across industries are already seeing the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft recently delivered its strongest quarter yet with Copilot, with paid seats growing more than 160% year over year and daily active usage up ten times, as customers increasingly make Copilot a core part of everyday work. Expansion is also accelerating as the number of customers deploying Copilot at significant scale — more than 35,000 seats — tripled year over year. Just last week, Mercedes Benz announced a global rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot, following recent investments from NASA, Fiserv, ING, the University of Kentucky, the University of Manchester, the U.S. Department of the Interior and Westpac. This is in addition to the 90 percent of the Fortune 500 who now use Copilot.

Trust: from agent experimentation and sprawl to enterprise control 

The speed of agent development and proliferation tells us customers see value, but without guardrails the pace of adoption turns into blind spots, diminished ROI and real security risk. As AI agents become more capable and autonomous, trust is nonnegotiable. IDC predicts 1.3B agents in circulation by 2028, and 80% of the Fortune 500 are already using Microsoft agents, led by operationally complex industries like manufacturing, financial services and retail.

That is why I am excited to announce the May 1 general availability of Microsoft Agent 365, the control-plane for AI agents. Priced at $15 per user, Agent 365 gives IT and security leaders a single place to observe, govern, manage and secure agents across the organization — using the same infrastructure, applications and protections they rely on to manage people today.

We are seeing tremendous momentum with our preview customers. In just two months, tens of millions of agents have appeared in the Agent 365 Registry. We have tens of thousands of customers that are already adopting Agent 365 to securely govern and scale AI agents across enterprise workflows.

At Microsoft, we are also using Agent 365 as Customer Zero and the early signals are clear. We now have visibility into more than 500,000 agents across the company with the most widely used focused on research, coding, sales intelligence, customer triage and HR self-service. That adoption is translating into real work. Over the past 28 days alone, agents have been generating more than 65,000 responses every day for employees. This is evidence that we are not simply experimenting, we are embedding agents in the flow of everyday work and empowering human ambition.

Introducing the Frontier Suite

To meet this demand, I am thrilled to announce we are bringing Intelligence + Trust together with Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite. Microsoft 365 E7 unifies Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365 into a single solution powered by Work IQ and integrated with the apps and security stack customers already rely on. It includes Microsoft Entra Suite and advanced Defender, Intune and Purview security capabilities, delivering comprehensive protection across agents and employees.

Customers have told us E5 alone is no longer enough; they do not want multiple tools stitched together, they want one trusted solution. At $99 per user, E7 is priced below purchasing these capabilities à la carte, giving customers a simpler, more cost-effective way to deploy enterprise AI at scale.

With the general availability of Agent 365 and the latest agentic experiences in Microsoft 365 Copilot offered as one Frontier suite, AI moves from experimentation to durable, enterprise-wide value, built on a foundation of Intelligence + Trust. This is how we make Frontier Transformation real. Microsoft is not just imagining the future of AI, we are empowering organizations across industries and around the world to build it.

The post Introducing the First Frontier Suite built on Intelligence + Trust appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

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.

Transform the way care teams work with Dragon Copilot

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:

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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.

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“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.

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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

Connect with a Dragon Copilot product specialist

• 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 The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

To support these confidential environments, Microsoft offers full stack capabilities that support customers across connected, intermittently connected, and fully disconnected modes. Today’s expansion of capabilities includes three major updates:

• Azure Local disconnected operations (now available) – Organizations can now run mission-critical infrastructure with Azure governance and policy control, with no cloud connectivity, optimizing continuity for sovereign, classified or isolated environments.
• Microsoft 365 Local disconnected (now available) – Core productivity workloads, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server, can run fully inside the customer’s sovereign operational boundary on Azure Local, keeping teams productive even when disconnected from the cloud.
• Foundry Local adds large model and modern infrastructure capabilities – Organizations can now bring large AI models into fully disconnected, sovereign environments with Foundry Local. Using modern infrastructure from partners like NVIDIA, customers with sovereign needs will now be able to run multimodal models locally on their own hardware, inside strict sovereign boundaries enabling powerful, local AI inferencing in fully disconnected environments.

This delivers a truly localized full stack experience built on Azure Local infrastructure and Microsoft 365 Local workloads, designed to stay resilient across any connectivity condition, with large models being part of Foundry Local extending the stack to run advanced multimodal models locally, securely, even when fully disconnected. Customers can now help maintain uninterrupted operations, keep mission critical workloads protected, and apply consistent governance and policy enforcement, while keeping data, identities, and operations within their sovereign boundaries.

Azure Local runs critical infrastructure locally, even when disconnected

For workloads with specialized requirements, Azure Local provides the on-premises foundation with consistent Azure governance and policy controls. With Azure Local disconnected operations, management, policy, and workload execution stay within the customer-operated environments, so services continue running securely even when environments must be isolated or connectivity is not available. Using familiar Azure experiences and consistent policies, organizations can deploy and govern workloads locally without depending on continuous connection to public cloud services. Azure Local is designed to scale with mission-critical needs from smaller deployments to larger footprints that support data-intensive and AI-driven workloads. Customers can start fast, expand over time, and maintain a unified operational model, all within their sovereign boundary.

Operating in disconnected environments surfaces constraints that go beyond traditional cloud assumptions: external dependencies may be unacceptable, connectivity may be intentionally restricted, and operational continuity is a business imperative.

“The availability of Azure Local disconnected operations represents a breakthrough for organizations that need control over their data without sacrificing the power of the Microsoft Cloud. For Luxembourg, where digital sovereignty is not just a principle but a strategic necessity, this model offers the resilience, autonomy, and trust our market expects. By combining Microsoft’s technological leadership with Proximus NXT’s sovereign cloud expertise, we are enabling our customers to innovate confidently – even in fully disconnected mode,”said Gerard Hoffmann, CEO Proximus Luxembourg.

Microsoft 365 Local keeps productivity and collaboration available in fully disconnected environments

As sovereign environments move into disconnected environments, keeping people productive becomes just as critical as keeping infrastructure online. Building on more than a decade of delivering and supporting these services, Microsoft 365 Local disconnected brings that continuity to the productivity layer, delivering Microsoft’s core server workloads—Exchange Server, SharePoint Server,and Skype for Business Server supported through at least 2035—directly into the customer’s sovereign private cloud.

With Microsoft 365 Local, teams can communicate, share information, and collaborate securely within the same controlled boundary as their infrastructure and AI workloads. Everything runs locally, under customer-owned policies, with full control of data resiliency, access, and compliance. By operating with Azure-consistent management and governance, customers get the productivity experience they rely on, designed to stay resilient and secure even when offline.

Bringing large models and modern infrastructure to Foundry Local

With the availability of larger models and modern infrastructure as part of the Foundry Local portfolio, Microsoft is enabling customers with highly secure environments the ability to run multimodal, large models directly inside their sovereign private cloud environments. This brings the richness of Microsoft’s enterprise AI capabilities to on-premises systems, complete with local inferencing and APIs that operate completely within customer-controlled data boundaries.

Expanding beyond small models, the integration of Foundry Local with Azure Local is specifically designed to support large-scale models utilizing the latest GPUs from partners such as NVIDIA. Microsoft will provide comprehensive support for deployments, updates, and operational health. Even as inferencing demands increase overtime, customers retain complete control over their data and hardware.

Choice and control without added complexity

Customers facing strict sovereignty and regulatory requirements are clear that a fully disconnected sovereign private cloud is a key business need. Microsoft Sovereign Private Cloud is designed to meet these needs head-on, enabling secure, compliant operations even in environments with no external connectivity. At the same time, we recognize that disconnected environments are not one-size-fits-all; some customers operate across connected, hybrid, and disconnected modes based on mission, risk, and regulation. Our approach helps customers to meet strict sovereign requirements in fully disconnected scenarios without compromising simplicity, while retaining flexibility where connectivity is possible. Together, Azure Local disconnected operations, Microsoft 365 Local, and Foundry Local help organizations choose where workloads run and how environments are managed, while standardizing governance and operational practices across connected and disconnected deployments.

Next steps

Get started

• Azure Local disconnected operations and Microsoft 365 Local disconnected are now available worldwide, and large models on Foundry Local are available to qualified customers.
• Explore the Microsoft Sovereign Cloud
• Learn more about Azure Local disconnected operations

The post Microsoft Sovereign Cloud adds governance, productivity, and support for large AI models securely running even when completely disconnected appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

That’s why I’m excited to share that Microsoft Azure has completed an independent, industry‑led GxP supplier audit conducted through the Joint Audit Group managed by Ingelheimer Kreis (IK).

GxP refers to regulations that ensure quality, safety, and data integrity in highly regulated environments, particularly in life sciences. This milestone provides independent validation that Azure’s systems and processes meet the standards required to support regulated workloads in the cloud, giving organizations greater confidence to accelerate their AI transformation and scale innovation responsibly.

“Overall, the audit observed strong organizational maturity, robust processes, and effective governance structures. Microsoft demonstrated a high degree of transparency, collaboration, and readiness to address regulatory expectations. Furthermore, Microsoft demonstrated strong maturity in quality, security, compliance, engineering, and operational processes. The organization showed strong commitment from leadership and robust operational controls.”

As quoted by the Joint Audit Group managed by Ingelheimer Kreis

This milestone builds on Azure’s longstanding commitment to compliance, reinforcing trust across life sciences and other highly regulated industries while helping accelerate broader cloud and AI adoption.

Raising the bar for cloud trust in life sciences and beyond

IK conducted a GxP-aligned supplier audit of selected aspects of Microsoft’s cloud service operations within an agreed scope. The sessions provided insight into governance, security and software engineering practices, and operational processes that may impact regulated GxP use of Microsoft Azure and related services. The audit was performed using a spot-check approach and reflects the information presented by Microsoft during the sessions. The IK audit results provide IK members with assurance regarding the Azure controls environment, enabling members to work to remove compliance blockers, accelerate their adoption of Azure services, and obtain confidence and trust in the security and sovereignty controls of Azure.

The joint GxP audit provides pharmaceutical and life sciences organizations with a higher level of confidence that Azure’s operational, security, and compliance practices meet industry expectations for validated GxP workloads. By having a coalition of major pharmaceutical manufacturers audit Microsoft’s cloud controls, customers gain assurance that Azure’s change management processes, evergreen update model, and underlying operational rigor align with the standards historically required in on-premises validated environments. This independent industry assessment reduces longstanding adoption barriers for regulated workloads and gives customers a basis for trusting Azure as a compliant, reliable platform for GxP relevant applications.

Microsoft Azure is designed to meet stringent requirements for data residency, privacy, and compliance. With Microsoft, organizations can keep sensitive data within defined geographic boundaries and under local jurisdictional control.

Microsoft offers a comprehensive set of compliance offerings to help organizations comply with national, regional, and industry-specific requirements. Backed by more than 100 compliance certifications—including ISO, HIPAA, and HITRUST, Azure meets rigorous security and privacy requirements across global and industry frameworks.

Securing the future: a collaborative approach

Security and compliance in the cloud is a shared responsibility, and the division of those responsibilities between the cloud service provider and customer depends on the cloud offering utilized. Microsoft works to ensure that we are compliant with industry and international standards, and customers are responsible for ensuring their data within the Microsoft Cloud is protected in a manner that is compliant with the standards and regulations imposed on the customer.

Azure integrates with services such as Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager and Defender for Cloud to provide organizations with visibility into their compliance posture and enable proactive governance across cloud environments.

We also provide clear guidance and detailed, auditable evidence through the Microsoft Trust Center and the Service Trust Portal. These tools exist to give customers transparency and confidence, pairing high‑level trust principles with concrete proof customers can use to meet their own regulatory and assurance needs.

With independently audited controls now recognized by leading multinational pharmaceutical companies, Azure gives life sciences organizations the confidence to run their regulated workloads in the cloud—so they can focus on what truly drives value: discovering new therapies, accelerating R&D, scaling clinical operations, and manufacturing medicines reliably at global scale. Instead of diverting resources toward duplicative cloud platform audits, customers can trust that Azure’s underlying operational rigor, change management processes, and security practices meet GxP expectations.

The audit strengthens the foundation that lets life sciences innovators move faster, modernize safely, and keep their focus on bringing breakthrough medicines and devices to patients. For more information on the audit, contact the team.

Empowering our customers

Microsoft remains committed to meeting today’s compliance, security, and regulatory standards. Across our cloud platforms and services, we maintain rigorous and independently validated controls, adhere to applicable laws and industry requirements, and continually strengthen our frameworks to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer data. This commitment is reinforced by foundational company policies, a robust global compliance program, and active oversight from senior leadership—ensuring that every Microsoft offering is built on trust, transparency, and responsible innovation.

By working with industry leaders and regulators to shape compliance frameworks and advance sovereign cloud capabilities, Azure supports the next era of regulated AI innovation. By upholding these standards, we empower organizations in regulated industries to operate confidently, knowing their workloads run on a platform designed to meet stringent expectations today and evolve alongside emerging regulatory guidance, validated by independent experts and experienced by customers every day.

More on our approach to trust and compliance

• Dive deeper into how leading life sciences organizations are building readiness and resilience with trusted cloud platforms. Explore the e-book, Reshaping Manufacturing and Supply Chain in Pharma and MedTech, to discover actionable strategies for compliance, innovation, and operational excellence in regulated manufacturing.
• Explore From Vision to Value: AI Use Cases Transforming Healthcare to learn how healthcare and life sciences organizations are applying AI today on trusted cloud platforms.
• To learn more about Microsoft’s approach to trust and compliance, explore resources at the Microsoft Trust Center.

Connect with us at upcoming industry events to see how Azure can help your organization achieve more with confidence.

The post Microsoft Azure achieves GxP milestone, reinforcing trust for regulated workloads appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Today Microsoft announced it has met its 2025 renewable energy goal — first announced in 2020 — of purchasing enough renewable energy to match 100% of the electricity used by all its datacenters, buildings and campuses by 2025.

Microsoft has contracted to add 40 gigawatts of renewable energy to the grid — the vast global infrastructure that keeps electricity flowing from power plants via high-voltage lines and local networks to datacenters and local communities. Of that contracted volume, 19 gigawatts of renewable energy are now online.

Microsoft and other corporate renewable energy buyers enter into contracts known as power purchase agreements (PPAs) to help power plant developers bring new projects forward. These are typically 10- to 15-year commitments that enable developers to build new power plants and in exchange provide them with predictable returns that make their investments feasible.

Meeting Microsoft’s renewable energy targets requires different strategies, each tailored to local geographies, community needs and regulatory frameworks. Below is a look at six companies across the globe that helped Microsoft meet its commitment to match 100% of its electricity use in datacenters and other operations with renewable energy purchases by 2025.

Sol Systems: Advancing community investment and sustainable agriculture through dual-use solar farms 

Grain is growing in southwestern Illinois, but it’s not your typical farm. Instead, the hardy grain has been planted in neat rows underneath a huge array of solar panels built to generate 270 megawatts of solar energy at peak sunlight.

Located in the rural farming town of Eldorado, Illinois, this unique energy farm is the result of a power purchase and community investment agreement between Sol Systems and Microsoft that is expected to add over 500 megawatts of solar energy to the grid from sites in Illinois, Ohio and Texas. The agreement includes an innovative investment fund, expected to be $50 million for the next 20 years, designed to benefit the local communities.

In Eldorado, that includes educational initiatives that range from a virtual reality welding simulator to hydroponic garden towers, bringing a full hands-on experience and career exposure to elementary school students, and a state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouse cooperative at Eldorado High School, providing job skills and fresh produce for the local school lunch program. Two other dual-use solar projects under the Sol Systems-Microsoft agreement in Illinois feature grazing sheep and other sustainable land management initiatives, like pollinator habitat and specialty crop farming.

Yuri Horwitz, chief executive of Sol Systems since its founding in 2008, said he hopes its agreement with Microsoft can be a blueprint for community investment between energy buyers and renewable energy producers to fuel long-term economic and environmental impact.

Prior to the work in Eldorado, the funding helped Bright Solar Futures, an early career education program established by the Philadelphia Energy Authority to develop and implement a curriculum for high school students interested in solar careers. It also enabled trainees at PowerCorps PHL, which focuses on training 18- to 26-year-olds in the Philadelphia metropolitan area to earn their OSHA 30 certificates, an essential certificate in the energy industry.

“From the beginning, our goal with Microsoft was to show what’s possible when energy buyers and developers work hand-in-hand with local communities,” Horwitz said. “These projects are designed to produce power but, just as importantly, to create opportunity, trust and lasting value in the places where they’re built.”

The grain growing on the Eldorado solar farm, called Kernza®, is a type of hardy perennial grain developed by The Land Institute. It is renowned for its nutty flavor and deep root systems, which both improve soil health and serve as a natural carbon storage system.

Sol Systems leases the land for its solar farm operations from farmers and other local landowners, to be returned to farming upon decommissioning of the solar project.

Incorporating agriculture allows for continued and sustainable use of the land.

“We think of ourselves as stewards of the land beneath our projects. We hope to one day give this land back to the community with rich and healthy soils to enable continued farming,” he said.

Brookfield: Bringing renewable power to the grid at scale

When the Hawk’s Nest hydroelectric plant in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, first began generating electricity in 1936, it was considered a remarkable engineering feat because of its sheer size and the difficulty of digging out a water-diversion tunnel deep inside a mountain. Historically, the plant powered a nearby industrial manufacturing facility and was never connected directly to the broader grid.

With energy demand surging, plant owner Brookfield is working to bring the facility into the modern age and for the first time deliver a portion of its power into the local utility grid, bringing new capacity online to support the broader electricity needs of the community.

“With the benefit of our offtake agreement with Microsoft, we’ve made major investments over the last five years to ensure that an asset that’s been around for nearly 100 years will continue for the next 100 years,” said Stephen Gallagher, chief executive officer of North American operations for Brookfield’s renewable group. Microsoft expects to begin receiving power from the Hawk’s Nest plant next year.

The West Virginia facility is one of many projects that Brookfield is developing as part of an agreement with Microsoft to deliver over 10.5 gigawatts of renewable power capacity. The Brookfield portfolio contracted to Microsoft includes the Aspen Road solar farm in Pennsylvania and the Jones Farm and Egypt Road solar projects in Maryland, each of which include wildlife corridors and pollinator habits. These projects were specifically structured to not impact prime farmland and offer local landowners the opportunity to preserve large open tracts of land once the projects are decommissioned. The companies are initially focused on building capacity in the U.S. and Europe, with the opportunity to expand to other parts of the world.

Brookfield works closely with local and regional utilities to address the ongoing challenge of grid upgrades needed to integrate more solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy and reduce bottlenecks. “All of us are struggling with the timelines it takes to connect to the grid,” said Gallagher. Even before construction can begin, energy producers must navigate the lengthy permissions and engineering studies required by regional utilities, a process that typically takes five to seven years for solar and even longer for wind projects. Construction itself may last 12 to 18 months.

Brookfield also looks for opportunities to leverage inventory and supplier relationships to help utilities solve supply chain issues and ease bottlenecks that often also lead to delays in connecting renewable energy to the grid. Where local regulations allow, “we try to help utilities by prefunding procurement or delivering transformers or breakers earlier so they can get us on faster,” said Gallagher. “Because our pipeline is so large, we can bring projects on a lot more rapidly than others.”

Auren Energia: Operating a women-run wind farm in Brazil 

Hertha Ayrton would be impressed.

Ayrton was an electrical engineer — and one of the first women to be recognized as a pioneer in the male-dominated field of electricity at the turn of the last century.

If Ayrton were to travel to Brazil’s distant northeast today, she would discover an advanced wind farm operated by women.

The wind farm is owned and operated by Auren Energia, one of Brazil’s leading renewable power companies. As part of a power purchase agreement signed in 2023, Microsoft purchases renewable energy from the 154-megawatt Cajuina wind complex, which includes the women-run wind farm. “As you can imagine, power generation, it’s mostly operated by males so it’s very different and something we are very proud of,” said Eduardo De Oliveira Diniz, director of trading and clients at Auren Energia. Recruiting and training the staff was done with an institution focused on workforce development and innovation for Brazilian industry.

Brazil’s remote northeast has become a hub for renewable energy due to its high winds and vast open land. Auren has invested heavily in roads and clean-water access for the more than 200 people who live around and sometimes work for the wind farm complex. It also provides support for nearby schools and construction jobs during site buildouts. The PPA made the project and its related community benefits possible, said Diniz.

Historically, Brazil’s large network of rivers and intense rainy season made hydroelectricity Brazil’s main energy source, but in the last few years wind and solar have grown rapidly as costs have fallen, said Diniz. Auren dispatches energy within the national energy grid that delivers power generated in the north to population centers over 1,300 miles away in the southeast. The project feeds into the broader grid that Microsoft datacenters are connected to.

“Auren has a 100% renewable energy portfolio with a strategically complementary mix of sources between hydro, wind and solar generation,” said Diniz. “We really believe in the power of our portfolio.”

FRV Australia: The importance of knowing your neighbors

After the construction staff of a new solar energy facility in New South Wales, Australia, finished unpacking tens of thousands of solar panels, a local nonprofit group received an unexpected offer: Would the group have any use for the empty wood pallets used to transport over 700,000 panels on their journey to southeast Australia?

In fact, they did, recycling the wood frames into handmade toys later sold to benefit local charities.

“It may sound silly, but it made a big impact,” said Michael Steiner, chief business development officer at FRV Australia, part of the Fotowatio Renewable Ventures energy company. It was, he said, an example of the importance of making time to get to know your community.

The Walla Walla solar facility is a 300-megawatt project located in east Australia. FRV Australia signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft to provide renewable energy from Walla Walla, which also supports the regional government’s economic and renewable energy goals. The Microsoft contract was “the fundamental ingredient for making such a project a reality,” said Steiner.

The Walla Walla solar farm is also part of a much larger effort across Australia to transition to renewable energy. “Replacing 14 gigawatts of coal-fired generation in the next 10 years is a humongous task,” said Steiner.

The vast facility, where sheep still graze across the landscape, covers 605 hectares and will produce enough solar energy to power more than 90,000 New South Wales homes annually. Construction generated roughly 350 local jobs before it was completed in the fall of 2025. One advantage of the site location was its proximity to the existing national electricity grid, which allowed the solar facility to deliver power using an existing transmission line easement.

The agricultural landscape, like nearly all of rural Australia, is naturally at risk of fire. FRV worked closely with the local community on strict fire prevention standards and plans. FRV also provided funding for local infrastructure improvements, including the restoration of Walla Walla Memorial Hall, which will preserve a valuable piece of local heritage and provide a versatile space for community events and activities. Additionally, these funds will be used for upgrades to local community infrastructure and playground and swimming pool facilities. Steiner said FRV will continue to engage with the local government to fund deserving community initiatives over the life of the solar facility.

“We need to create this trust and engagement from day one on every project that we do,” said Steiner. “If you don’t, you will not get anywhere, and your project probably will fail before you even start building.”

ENGIE: Repowering renewable energy assets boosts capacity and reduces environmental impact

A wind farm in southern France is generating twice as much renewable energy for the French power grid thanks to a repowering that is supported by a power purchase agreement between Microsoft and ENGIE, a multinational company based in France focused on low-carbon energy solutions.

The wind farm is located in the historical town of Fitou, known for its red wines and high winds, making it a favorite for wind and kite surfers.

The makeover of the Fitou wind farm after 22 years of wind power production involved the careful dismantling of the wind farm’s foundations, turbines and blades and replacing them with more powerful and efficient parts. The process, known as “repowering,” helps increase energy production without occupying additional land. According to ENGIE, the upgrade nearly doubled the site’s total capacity.

The project recycled and reused as many parts as possible and drew from nearly two decades of operational insights to reduce the repowered wind farm’s impact on the local environment and wildlife. For example, the updated wind farm includes sensors that automatically slow down blades when birds are detected nearby. 

“We enhanced our longstanding biodiversity and noise management measures with the latest technologies and an AI tool,” said Katrin Fuhrmann, managing director for ENGIE’s B-to-B activities in Central Europe.

Besides boosting energy production, ENGIE has used novel methods for engaging the community around other wind farms in its portfolio, including crowdfunding to give local residents a chance to become co-owners of the Landes de Couesme complex, also in France.

More broadly, ENGIE and Microsoft have built a long‑term, strategic collaboration centered on renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs). These contracts allow Microsoft to secure additional renewable electricity while giving ENGIE the long‑term visibility needed to develop new wind and solar assets across Europe. Together, the two companies have already enabled the development of 26 renewable energy projects in France and seven in Germany, representing 416 megawatts of renewable capacity currently online. This approach, grounded in innovation and decarbonization, is accelerating the deployment of low‑carbon electricity that benefits both the grid and local communities.

“Electricity consumption is increasing, and renewable production is increasing exponentially,” said Furhmann. Repowering existing plants helps accelerate the production of renewable energy by allowing producers to reuse existing sites and grid connections. “And Microsoft is helping us in developing these renewable assets,” she added. “It really is a win-win situation.”

EDP Renewables North America: Providing reliable power, benefits and income

From the prairies of Texas to rolling hills in Illinois and Ohio, Microsoft has contracted with EDP Renewables North America (EDPR NA) to bring 675 megawatts of solar and wind energy online through power purchase agreements — or enough electricity to power more than 150,000 U.S. homes.

Across all these projects, EDPR NA has worked to deliver tangible benefits for the communities in which it operates — from upgrading access roads and investing in community projects to offering landowners accustomed to fickle weather, crop or cattle prices predictable income from lease payments for hosting wind turbines or solar panels on their properties.

For instance, the Cattlemen Solar II project in Milam County north of Austin, Texas, is expected to generate more than $41 million in revenue over the project’s lifetime to local governments to support public services and infrastructure, EDPR NA estimates. The project also is expected to deliver over $50 million in payments to landowners to diversify revenue and provide a steady source of income. In addition, EDPR NA has helped fund the construction of accessible bleachers at the local high school and the purchase of an emergency services vehicle for the county.

“Depending on the project and the location, we work really hard to find our place, the right place in each community,” said Kelly Snyder, executive vice president of origination for EDPR NA.

In the same way that lease payments for solar and wind projects help give landowners financial predictability, power purchase agreements executed by Microsoft can give renewable energy developers like EDPR NA revenue stability needed to finance new renewable projects at the lowest possible cost — making them more attractive for banks and other lenders to finance. In turn, those projects add cleaner, reliable power to the grid in key regions where Microsoft operates.

“As energy demand rises across the country, these agreements support investment in domestic energy infrastructure while delivering long-term value for customers, communities and the broader economy,” said Snyder.

Top image: A wind farm in Fitou, France. Photo courtesy of ENGIE.

Related links:

Learn more: A milestone achievement in our journey to carbon negative

Learn more: As the world goes digital, datacenters that make the cloud work look to renewable energy sources

Learn more: Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030

Learn more: Advancing sustainability

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Over a decade of investment: 40 gigawatts of new renewable energy contracted

What began in 2013 with a single 110 megawatt (MW) power purchase agreement (PPA) in Texas — a small first step to demonstrate how corporate procurement could scale clean energy(3) — has evolved into one of the largest clean energy portfolios in the world. This first deal not only supported Microsoft’s early cloud services but also set in motion a decade of commercial partnerships and learning-by-doing that served to demonstrate how corporate demand for advanced energy solutions can help to achieve a more affordable and sustainable power system, while supporting reliability for customers.

Since our carbon negative announcement in 2020, we have contracted 40 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy supply across 26 countries, working with more than 95 utilities and developers across 400+ contracts and counting. To put that amount in perspective — that’s enough energy to power about 10 million US homes. Of that contracted volume, 19 GW are now online, delivering new clean energy supply to the power grid, while the remainder are slated to come online over the next five years.

Our new renewable energy procurement continues to deliver significant environmental benefits, including the reduction of Microsoft’s reported Scope 2 carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 25 million tons(4) and the mobilization of billions of dollars’ worth of private investment in regions where we operate.

Microsoft’s global renewable energy procurement footprint

Catalyzing market investment through bankable, repeatable models

Microsoft is among the early pioneers in developing technical and commercial practices that help advance bankable, repeatable and scalable procurement tools suitable for each market. Our clean energy purchasing navigates a global patchwork of power market designs, requiring creativity in how we balance cost, time to market and project sizing in our portfolio across planning, contracting and management.

Our work has benefited from a broad coalition of partners helping to build this market together. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, more than 200 global corporations collectively purchased nearly 200 GW of clean energy around the world since 2008. Working alongside other clean energy buyers — as well as hundreds of utilities, manufacturers, financiers, developers and engineers — we have helped reduce transaction costs, expand developer access to financing and streamline procurement approaches that other buyers can adopt.

This global flywheel of partnership, investment, technology and policy innovation is expected to continue to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of investment into infrastructure and jobs. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, when Microsoft sends a clear market signal for world-class, first-of-a-kind technologies and infrastructure, the power sector rises to the challenge. Our procurement over the past decade has demonstrated that partnerships, communities and innovation are essential ingredients that help to accelerate first-of-a-kind technologies and infrastructure at scale.

Scaling partnerships to scale infrastructure

Critical to Microsoft’s success in expanding digital infrastructure and supporting our local communities is our ability to build trusted partnerships with the over 95 global energy suppliers that support our clean energy portfolio. We have sourced clean energy through multiple requests for proposal or information, bilateral engagements and clean tariffs to evaluate over 5,000 unique carbon-free energy projects around the world.

Today, Microsoft has six energy company partners with which we have over 1 GW of contracted renewable energy capacity, and more than 20 energy supplier partners where each partner has at least five separate renewable energy projects with Microsoft — evidence of the durable, repeatable relationships necessary to scale clean energy. Combining scale with speed, Microsoft’s landmark 10.5 GW framework agreement with Brookfield sends a long-term, 2030 demand signal to the market that enables developers to raise funding more efficiently, bolster supply chains, hire engineers and construct world-class energy infrastructure.

Putting communities first

Our renewable energy procurement has mobilized billions of dollars in private investment, supported thousands of jobs across the communities where we operate and delivered meaningful co-benefits. Through partnerships with developers and nonprofit organizations, we’ve worked to embed community-driven benefits into our energy portfolio. These benefits include robust infrastructure, economic inclusion and support for community-focused organizations.

Our support for communities shows up in projects like our 500 MW PPA with Sol Systems, or our 250 MW PPA with Volt Energy Utility that provided local training and jobs, as well as grants to community nonprofit organizations and habitat restoration. We’ve also signed over 1.5 GW of distributed solar, bringing clean energy directly into hundreds of communities around the world. Landmark agreements like our 500 MW offtake with Pivot Energy, or our 270 MW offtake with PowerTrust are expected to foster employment, energy cost savings and grid resilience in communities across the United States, Mexico and Brazil. More details on the above examples and our approach to community benefits in clean energy agreements can be found in a dedicated Microsoft whitepaper.

Innovation unlocks new markets and pathways

Microsoft’s clean energy procurement continues to play an important role in catalyzing technical, commercial and regulatory innovation. Our commercial efforts have helped lower barriers to entry into new markets and expand access into multi-technology contracts that accelerate decarbonization.

In Japan, Microsoft signed one of the first corporate PPAs in the country’s restructured power market. Our 25 MW, 20-year agreement with Shizen represents the first single-asset virtual PPA executed in the country, which helped pave the way to over 2GWs of corporate procurement since 2024, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Alongside opening new markets, we have structured several multi-technology offtakes in nascent markets for corporate procurement. In India, Microsoft purchased a combined 437 MW solar/wind hybrid offtake from Renew, where our projects will support energy access and rural electrification. In Microsoft’s home state of Washington, our datacenters in Douglas County are supplied by 100% carbon-free energy, as we leverage a creative blend of new wind power and hydropower storage to deliver around-the-clock clean energy.

Looking forward to 2030 and beyond

In 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) described a new “Age of Electricity,” marked by accelerating electricity demand from electric vehicles, air conditioners, data centers and heat pumps. As the world electrifies more of the economy, the demand for affordable, reliable and clean electricity will continue to rise.

Our experience building Microsoft’s clean energy portfolio both reflects and furthers global trends. According to IEA data, since 2000, renewable energy generation has expanded nearly four-fold. In many power markets across the world, clean energy is one of the fast-growing sources of generation, and often the one with the fastest time-to-market. Corporate buyers like Microsoft continue to serve as an important catalyst in driving commercial demand for innovation and infrastructure across the power industry.

As we continue our journey toward becoming carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft will continue to push for an expansive focus on adding all forms of carbon-free electricity solutions, complementing and adding to our portfolio of renewable energy resources. We recognize that the world’s rising electricity needs require a balanced, all-of-the-above decarbonization strategy to meet global economic growth and environmental goals, and our sustainability goals will continue to support this approach moving forward. Such a strategy requires a broader set of carbon-free energy and grid-enabling technologies, including nuclear energy, next-generation grid infrastructure and carbon capture technology. Just as renewable energy was a relatively small part of global energy grids in 2013 when we signed our first PPA, today many advanced energy technologies remain early in their development but offer significant promise to accelerate progress towards an affordable, reliable and sustainable energy future.

Microsoft has already taken early steps to support the advancement of a broader set of carbon-free energy technologies as we partner with Helion and Constellation Energy on a 50 MW fusion project in Washington state and work with Constellation to restart the 835 MW Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania. Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund has allocated $806 million of capital to 67 investees, with 38% directed toward Energy Systems — advancing carbon-free power and fuels, energy storage and energy management solutions.

We welcome continued collaboration with our power sector partners to bring these innovations to market and incorporate new technology tools in the process to accelerate their development.

We will continue to build and leverage new AI-driven tools to design, permit and deploy new power technologies that help expand and more efficiently operate the electricity grid, bringing more clean energy online faster. This work is exemplified by our recently announced collaborations with Idaho National Laboratory and the Midcontinental System Operator, among other examples.

And as we advance innovative energy technologies, we recognize that standards must evolve alongside innovation. That is why we will continue participating in industry forums that strengthen carbon accounting frameworks — so that our clean energy procurement is measured with greater accuracy and delivers real world emissions reductions, with a continued focus on maintaining the high level of integrity that the world has come to expect from Microsoft.

Our carbon negative commitment remains a call to action — for Microsoft, our customers and the broader technology sector — to invest in an affordable, reliable and sustainable power system. As we look toward 2030, that call to action has never been clearer.

Gratitude — and momentum for the work ahead

Today’s milestone represents a shared achievement among the utility professionals, clean energy developers, community leaders, technology innovators and forward-thinking policymakers who continue the deployment of renewable energy. Meeting today’s milestone shows what partnership can deliver in bringing big ideas to life. The future of carbon-free energy is one that we will create – together.

As Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Melanie Nakagawa leads the company’s targets to be carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste by 2030. She brings deep experience at the intersection of policy, business, and technology to advance climate and sustainability solutions globally.

As President of Cloud Operations + Innovation at Microsoft, Noelle Walsh leads the organization that powers the global Microsoft Cloud. She oversees the company’s physical cloud infrastructure and operations, with a charter focused on safety, security, availability, sustainability, and competitive infrastructure growth—bringing decades of global operational leadership.

Footnotes

1. Renewable energy is defined within Microsoft’s fact sheet https://aka.ms/SustainabilityFactsheet2025, which represents FY24 data.
2. To date, Microsoft’s renewable energy target includes two primary categories: renewable energy from contracted projects and grid mix. The first is renewable energy delivered under PPAs or similar long-term contracting mechanisms, generally for new projects where our financial involvement in the project’s development is critical for its success. This category represents more than 90% of the renewable energy applied to achieve our 2025 target.The second category is “grid mix” – renewable energy supported via our standard utility relationships and rates, inclusive of policy programs such as renewable portfolio standards and state and utility decarbonization goals.Our 2025 100% renewable target does not include purchases from short-term, so-called “spot market” renewable energy credits (RECs) sourced from operational clean energy projects.With the above in mind, Microsoft leverages a straightforward formula to determine our 100% renewable energy metric on a global, annual basis. We update and further detail the methodology and assumptions behind this formula in our annual sustainability reports:
3. Clean energy— also referred to in this blog as carbon free energy —is defined within Microsoft’s fact sheet https://aka.ms/SustainabilityFactsheet2025, which represents FY24 data.
4. Reduction of reported Scope 2 emissions are calculated between FY20-25, the cumulative difference between location based and market-based emissions, excluding the use of short-term, so-called “spot market” RECs

The post A milestone achievement in our journey to carbon negative appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

The 2026 Formula 1 regulation changes usher in a new era of racing for the sport, with increased electrification, efficiency and sustainability, representing one of the most significant technical evolutions in modern Formula 1 history. As the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team prepares for this transformation, it is partnering with Microsoft to harness the power of its trusted cloud and enterprise AI technologies across the business, from the factory to the racetrack.

“Our sport is driven by those who lead through innovation,” said Toto Wolff, CEO and Team Principal, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. “We are delighted to partner with Microsoft, one of the world’s foremost technology leaders, whose name is synonymous with groundbreaking innovation. This partnership also reflects our commitment to staying at the forefront of performance and progress. By putting Microsoft’s technology at the center of how we operate as a team, we will create faster insights, smarter collaboration and new ways of working as we look ahead to the next generation in F1.”

In a sport where races are decided by tenths of a second and every decision is data driven, Formula 1 represents the ultimate stress test for modern enterprise systems: extreme data volumes, real-time decision making, global operations and zero margin for error. United by the belief that technology is a competitive advantage, Microsoft and the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team will look to set a new standard for how enterprise technology drives performance at the highest levels of competition.

“This partnership puts Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise AI technologies at the heart of racing performance, where milliseconds matter and data determines outcomes,” said Judson Althoff, CEO, Microsoft commercial business. “Together with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, we are harnessing data and turning it into real-time intelligence that powers faster decisions, smarter strategies and sustained competitive advantage — both on and off the track.”

Racing at the speed of data

Modern Formula 1 cars are defined by precision and pace. Each Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team car carries more than 400 sensors, generating over 1.1 million data points per second. From tire degradation and aerodynamic behavior to Energy Recovery System deployment and evolving track conditions, every variable must be interpreted in real time.

Microsoft Azure and its AI capabilities will expand the Team’s existing high-performance computing and data capabilities, both the factory and trackside, with scalable cloud and AI resources supporting simulation workloads, performance analysis, race strategy modeling and cross-team analytics. The flexibility and agility of this platform will help ensure engineers and strategists have real-time insights available at the moments that matter most.

“It is a privilege to welcome Microsoft into the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team partner ecosystem,” said Richard Sanders, Chief Commercial Officer, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. “Microsoft’s technology already plays a central role in how we operate as a business, and this partnership opens new opportunities to innovate as we look toward the next era of technological development. I look forward to seeing how our teams collaborate to unlock new ways of working across the organization.” 

Fueling human ambition

Microsoft 365 and GitHub already underpin many of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team’s engineering and operational workflows across its headquarters in Brackley and Brixworth, as well as trackside in the paddock. Building on this foundation, the team will expand its use of Microsoft 365 to unlock new levels of agility, accelerate innovation and enhance operational efficiency across the business.

Microsoft’s GitHub development tools and platforms help engineers innovate faster, optimize performance and push the boundaries of design, modeling and simulation. Going forward, the team’s engineering, simulation and software development groups will deepen their integration of GitHub to modernize and accelerate development workflows enabling greater consistency, speed and efficiency.

Scaling for performance

Working with Microsoft Azure to accelerate AI technology experimentation and scale, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team used real-time sensor data and Azure cloud tools to pilot intelligent virtual sensors, enabling rapid testing without waiting for new on-premises infrastructure.

With Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), they were able to easily adjust computing power, scaling up when demand is high and down when it’s not, delivering meaningful technological advancements while meeting strict financial and regulatory requirements.

From road to track

For more than 30 years, Microsoft and Mercedes-Benz have collaborated across the automotive value chain, from AI-powered smart factories and electric vehicle telemetry to onboard vehicle intelligence and cloud-enabled engineering systems. From the factory floor to Formula 1, this new partnership builds on that foundation, bringing the same innovative mindset and digital capabilities into the world’s premier motorsport.                                                  

About the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team 

Mercedes was born to race — and we’ve been doing it since 1901. Today, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team competes at the pinnacle of motorsport: the FIA Formula One World Championship. 

The pioneering spirit of our company founders lives on in our commitment to innovation and performance. As the world’s original automobile manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz has defined the cutting edge of technology for over a century. Today, our F1 team exists to demonstrate the best of the brand’s performance on the global stage. 

Based in Brackley and Brixworth, UK, over 2,000 committed team members work with a singular mission: to win the world championship. From 2014 to 2021, we secured a record eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships, and we are hungry for more. 

Our journey is not just about performance on the track; we also strive to make a positive impact on the world and inspire future generations. We are proud signatories of the Climate Pledge, and we are leading the way in building a more sustainable and inclusive sport. 

For more information, please visit www.mercedesamgf1.com. 

The post Microsoft and Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team unite to drive innovation from factory to circuit appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

From supporting clinical research and helping teams prepare documentation to assisting teams with documentation review for prior authorization workflows, organizations need AI that does more than generate text. They need AI that is designed to support medical and scientific complexity, reasons across multi-step workflows, and can be deployed responsibly at enterprise scale.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Anthropic has added new tools, connectors, and skills that allow Claude in Microsoft Foundry to bring advanced reasoning, agentic workflows, and model intelligence purpose built for healthcare and life sciences industries. Built on Azure’s secure, enterprise-grade foundation, Foundry ensures these capabilities scale responsibly while integrating with familiar Azure services for data, compliance, and workflow automation.

From general intelligence to domain expertise

1. Claude for healthcare
   A complementary set of domain specific model intelligence tools and resources that enable healthcare providers, payers, and organizations to use Claude for medical and operational workflows. These capabilities unlock use cases like qualifying prior authorization requests, supporting claims appeals processing, coordinating patient care and triage, and more.
2. Claude for life sciences
   New components that accelerate every stage of the research and development (R&D) lifecycle connecting Claude to more scientific platforms and enabling it to generate more consistent, high-quality experimental and clinical protocols. These capabilities unlock use cases like supporting teams in generating initial drafts of protocol materials, preparing regulatory submissions, and more.

Together, these capabilities build on major recent advances in Claude’s general intelligence bringing domain-aware AI into the workflows that matter most.

Built for regulated, real-world workflows

Claude’s advanced healthcare and life sciences capabilities enable organizations to deploy vertical-specific AI agents tailored to critical industry use cases. These agents combine:

• Advanced model capabilities optimized for healthcare and scientific reasoning.
• Enterprise-grade deployment paths aligned to industry requirements.
• Domain-specific connectors via model context protocol (MCP), and skills to complete specialized tasks.

All within the trusted, unified Microsoft Foundry platform.

Transforming healthcare from insight to action

Healthcare teams are often constrained by administrative burden, fragmented systems, and time-intensive workflows. Anthropic’s Claude helps address these challenges by supporting use cases such as:

• Prior authorization: Streamlining documentation review and decision support.
• Insurance claims appeal processing: Accelerating appeals with structured reasoning and evidence synthesis.
• Care coordination and patient message triage: Helping clinicians prioritize and respond more effectively.

Why it matters

• Powerful: Frontier-level reasoning across clinical, operational, and coding-related tasks.
• Tailored: Purpose-built for healthcare workflows with MCP connections.
• Committed: Part of a planned long-term evolution alongside healthcare organizations.

Accelerating life sciences from discovery to translation

In life sciences, speed and scientific rigor are critical. With intelligence and capabilities purpose built for life sciences, Claude supports end-to-end workflows across research, development, and operations.

Key life sciences use cases

• Preclinical R&D acceleration
  • Bioinformatics analysis
  • Protocol and experimental design
  • Literature synthesis and hypothesis generation
• Clinical trial operations and data management
• Regulatory affairs and submission preparation

Why it matters

• Trusted: Life sciences–specific capabilities built with biosafety guardrails.
• Powerful: Frontier AI for bioinformatics, experimental design, and synthesis.
• Tailored: Deep integrations with scientific databases, lab tools, and clinical and regulatory platforms.
• Committed: Co-developed alongside pharma and research leaders.

Powered by the latest advances in Claude intelligence

These domain-specific capabilities build on major improvements in Claude’s underlying models. According to Anthropic, when assessed on detailed simulations of real-world medical and scientific tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 substantially outperforms earlier releases across benchmarks such as:

• Scientific figure interpretation
• Computational biology
• Protein understanding

Combined with ongoing investments in safety, low hallucination rates, and responsible AI, these advances make Claude designed to provide improved support for real‑world workflows including prior authorization, care coordination, and regulatory submissions.

One platform. Many models. Built for trust.

With Microsoft Foundry, customers can choose from a growing catalog of industry-leading models—including Claude—while benefiting from a unified platform for governance, observability, deployment, and compliance.

Claude in Microsoft Foundry adds another powerful option for organizations that need:

• Domain-aware reasoning
• Enterprise-grade controls
• Flexible deployment across regulated environments

Get started

These advanced capabilities are available today using Claude in Microsoft Foundry. To learn more, explore the Foundry Models catalog or connect with your Microsoft account team to understand how Claude can support your healthcare or life sciences workloads.

The post Bridging the gap between AI and medicine: Claude in Microsoft Foundry advances capabilities for healthcare and life sciences customers appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

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.

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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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.

The post Agentic AI in action: Healthcare innovation at Microsoft Ignite 2025 appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.