Microsoft held its annual Build conference last week in San Francisco.

I always make a point of watching the keynote to see what the company is announcing, emphasizing, or most proud of this year.

Here are the announcements that stood out to me in this year's keynote.

Microsoft introduced 7 new AI Models, branded as MAI(Microsoft AI)

- MAI-Thinking-1 – reasoning model

- MAI-Code-1 – coding-focused model integrated with GitHub Copilot

- MAI-Image-2.5 – advanced image editing/generation

- MAI-Transcribe-1.5 – speech-to-text across 43 languages

- MAI-Voice-2 – multilingual voice generation

A GitHub Copilot app dedicated to using the AI tool to write, review, and manage code.

New features in GitHub Copilot

- Agentic workflows

- Multi-step autonomous coding tasks

- Session orchestration

- Deployment-oriented workflows

New Windows enhancements:

- They seemed excited about the Vertical taskbar, but I don't see this as an enhancement

- AI-powered Intelligent Terminal

- More on-device support for AI

New chips for more powerful machines to run models locally

Microsoft Foundry

- Support for thousands of models

- Better Fabric integration

Rayfin SDK and CLI allow developers to build AI applications and deploy them to Microsoft Fabric.

NOTE: This is what I heard and what resonated with me, so take it all with a grain of salt. Check the official Microsoft Build page and watch the video to decide for yourself.