Microsoft Ignite 2025: Summary of Everything We Are Seeing at the Major Annual Innovation Event

Microsoft Ignite 2025 is sending a clear and powerful message: the era of the Frontier Firms has officially begun — organisations where people work side by side with AI agents capable of automating tasks, anticipating needs, and accelerating decision-making. This year, Microsoft is presenting a complete ecosystem — Copilot, Work IQ, Agent 365 and new capabilities in Azure and Windows — enabling any organisation to move towards a hybrid model of work between humans and agents, in a secure, scalable, and smarter way than ever before.

We will update this post daily as new announcements are made throughout the event.

Microsoft Ignite is the company’s largest annual event, aimed at professionals, developers, business leaders, software architects, security specialists, and technical decision-makers. Each year, it brings together hundreds of thousands of online attendees and thousands in person, becoming the stage where the technologies shaping the industry’s roadmap are unveiled.

This year, the focus is on how to move from experimentation to real-world execution with AI, how to govern it responsibly, and how to enable organisations driven by data, autonomous agents, and advanced copilots.

This year’s edition is being held from 18–21 November in San Francisco, combining in-person sessions at the Moscone Center and the Chase Center with an online format accessible from anywhere.

• Online format: 19–21 November
• In-person format: 18–21 November

The structure of the event revolves around three essential pillars:

• Learn: technical sessions, labs, demos, and key announcements.
• Skill up: certifications, workshops, and advanced content.
• Connect: meetups, round tables, networking, and 1:1 sessions.

Keynote Highlights — Microsoft Ignite 2025

The Era of Frontier Firms

The concept of a Frontier Firm describes organisations that integrate AI into every level of their business. These companies combine human intuition with intelligent agents working in the background, reducing administrative workload, improving processes, and enabling faster and better-informed decisions. Ignite 2025 shows how this model is already emerging in sectors such as finance, industry, healthcare, and retail.

Microsoft’s goal is clear: to enable any organisation to adopt this operating model and transform its way of working by relying on specialised agents, copilots, and intelligent automation.

Copilot Evolves with Work IQ

Microsoft 365 Copilot takes a major leap forward with the introduction of Work IQ, an intelligence layer that understands how each person works and how information flows within an organisation. Work IQ analyses documents, emails, meetings, and relationships to provide more contextualised responses, anticipate needs, and suggest actions.

In addition, Copilot introduces new capabilities such as voice interaction on mobile devices, improvements in Outlook for one-tap email management, and a secure AI chat available to all Microsoft 365 users. It is a more natural, faster, and more connected experience aligned with real-world workflows.

Agents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint

Ignite 2025 introduces the new Agent Mode and specialised agents inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. AI no longer simply generates content on demand — it now collaborates iteratively with the user inside the apps to create high-quality documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

These agents understand the document’s context, recommend improvements, and automate tasks that previously required hours of manual work, accelerating the creation of corporate content of any kind.

Azure AI Foundry and Infrastructure for the Next Generation of Agents

To support this new wave of agents, Microsoft strengthens its platform with Azure AI Foundry, enabling organisations to build, train, deploy, and manage custom agents. This infrastructure supports models from multiple providers — including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft’s own optimised models — and provides tools to integrate them with enterprise systems and data.

The vision is clear: to offer a solid foundation so any organisation can build agents tailored to its processes without having to manage complex infrastructure.

Security and Governance: AI Built Secure by Design

As agents gain autonomy, security becomes critical. Ignite 2025 reinforces the importance of secure-by-design AI, with new capabilities in Defender, Entra, and Purview that allow organisations to audit, supervise, and control agent behaviour.

This includes full traceability, task-based permissions, anomaly detection, and a new approach to digital identity, where agents operate as “new users” within the organisation, with their own access and security policies.

Customer Zero: the New Strategy for Partners

Microsoft is promoting the Customer Zero philosophy across its partner ecosystem: before selling AI, partners should use it internally, applying agents within their own processes. This allows partners to learn faster, build real case studies, and offer clients solutions based on hands-on experience.

This strategy is helping global partners become Frontier Firms themselves, delivering stronger projects with greater credibility.

Windows 365 and the Future of the Workplace

Microsoft also showcased how Windows adapts to this new era through Windows 365 for Agents, a secure cloud environment designed to run agents in a controlled manner. From the Windows 11 taskbar, users will be able to invoke Copilot, launch agents, review their activity, and access files or applications guided by AI.

This turns the operating system into a true entry point for hybrid human–agent work.

AI in Practice: Real-World Use Cases

Ignite 2025 presented numerous examples of organisations already working with agents on a daily basis: a 70% reduction in administrative time in social services, supply chains managed through natural conversation, or Copilot adoption programmes growing 33% faster thanks to automated analysis.

These examples show that agents not only save time — they fundamentally reshape how teams operate and how decisions are made.

Executive Briefing: Key Product Updates from Ignite 2025

Ignite 2025 also offered an executive-level overview of Microsoft’s current product landscape. In productivity and intelligence, the expansion of the Copilot ecosystem and new agents powered by Work IQ stand out, enabling faster and more contextualised decision-making. With Agent Factory, organisations can create and deploy their own agents across Microsoft 365 and custom applications with ease.

In data, the arrival of Fabric IQ and Foundry IQ unifies analytics, knowledge, and operations into a single business model, offering real-time insight and a more secure foundation for agent reasoning.

Azure also takes centre stage by combining OpenAI and Anthropic models in a single enterprise-grade environment, reinforcing its position as the leading AI cloud. Azure Copilot introduces new agentic capabilities for cloud operations, and innovations such as Azure Ultra Disk improve performance while reducing costs.

In security and compliance, Microsoft expands Defender, Entra, Intune, Purview, and Sentinel with new features to secure every layer of the AI stack, including governance controls to prevent “shadow IT” risks in agent deployments.

Finally, Windows integrates AI-powered workflows, deeper Copilot integration, and enhanced enterprise security, ensuring productivity and compliance in hybrid work scenarios.

A Future with 1.3 Billion AI Agents

According to projections cited by Microsoft and supported by an IDC study, more than 1.3 billion AI agents could be in operation by 2028, automating workflows across organisations worldwide. This growth reinforces Microsoft’s focus on secure, governed and observable AI, ensuring that the rapid expansion of autonomous agents happens responsibly, without compromising trust or productivity.

Ignite 2025 Marks the Beginning of Human–Agent Work

Ignite 2025 makes one thing clear: the future of work will combine human judgement with the operational capacity of intelligent agents. With Copilot, Work IQ, Agent Mode, Azure AI Foundry, and Windows 365, Microsoft aims to enable every organisation to become a Frontier Firm — capable of operating faster, more precisely, and with far less friction.

More than an event, this edition confirms the start of a new era: the human–agent workplace has truly begun.

We will continue updating this post as new announcements are revealed throughout the event.