
At Build 2026, Microsoft unveiled a suite of AI advancements, including seven new in-house models and its first always-on agent, Microsoft Scout. Built on OpenClaw, Scout operates within Teams to automate tasks like scheduling. The company also showcased the Majorana 2 quantum chip, which boasts a 1,000x reliability improvement, hinting at faster quantum computing progress. These moves signal Microsoft's intent to lead in AI innovation, positioning its platforms as key players in the agentic AI era.
Read originalEarlier coverage that leads up to this article, and what followed. Lines connect each piece to the closest one after it, converging here.
Microsoft Research · May 5, 2026 · Related
NVIDIA Blog · May 18, 2026 · Background
Microsoft Research · May 21, 2026 · Related
NVIDIA Blog · June 2, 2026 · Related
The Rundown AI · June 2, 2026 · Related
The Verge AI · June 2, 2026 · Related
WIRED AI · June 2, 2026 · Related
TechCrunch AI · June 2, 2026 · Related
The Verge AI · June 3, 2026 · Related
WIRED AI · June 5, 2026 · Related
Matt Wolfe · June 8, 2026 · Related
Matt Wolfe · June 9, 2026 · Related
TechCrunch AI · July 27, 2026 · Related
Microsoft to unveil new AI models at Build
6 developments
This release quietly cements llama.cpp as the universal inference runtime by finally supporting NVIDIA's latest CUDA 13 stack alongside AMD's ROCm 10.0. The inclusion of native builds for Linux arm64 with Snapdragon chips, covering CPU, Adreno GPU, and Hexagon NPU, signals a serious push into mobile edge deployment. While Apple Silicon KleidiAI is disabled in this specific build, the broader hardware coverage means developers no longer need to compile from source for most modern accelerators. It’s less about new features and more about removing friction for anyone running local models on bleeding-edge or diverse hardware.
© The Verge AIApple is finally unlocking its AI suite for Chinese users with the iOS 27.3 beta, marking a significant regulatory milestone after months of approval delays. The rollout relies on Alibaba’s Qwen model rather than OpenAI, integrating features like notification summaries and visual intelligence directly into the OS. By sidestepping the new Siri in favor of established text and image tools, Apple is prioritizing immediate utility over the full generative experience. This move effectively brings Apple’s AI capabilities to a massive new market, albeit with localized constraints that distinguish it from the global release.
© Matt WolfeGoogle launched Gemini 4 Carbon, a new model variant aimed at providing high performance at a lower cost for inference tasks.