Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has outlined a vision for 2025, positioning AI as the cornerstone of the next major shift in application development. The company aims to reshape the entire application stack by integrating model-forward applications powered by autonomous agents. These AI-first applications will impact every category of software, compressing decades of technological evolution into just a few years. "Thirty years of change is being compressed into three years!" he remarked.
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Accelerating Change with AI
"We will build agentic applications with memory, entitlements, and action space that will inherit powerful model capabilities. And we will adapt these capabilities for enhanced performance and safety across roles, business processes, and industry domains. Further, how we build, deploy, and maintain code for these AI applications is also fundamentally changing and becoming agentic," Nadella explained in his communication.
New AI-First Application Stack
"This is leading to a new AI-first app stack — one with new UI/UX patterns, runtimes to build with agents, orchestrate multiple agents, and a reimagined management and observability layer. In this world, Azure must become the infrastructure for AI, while we build our AI platform and developer tools — spanning Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, and VS Code — on top of it. In other words, our AI platform and tools will come together to create agents, and these agents will come together to change every SaaS application category, and building custom applications will be driven by software (service as software)," he added.
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CoreAI – Platform and Tools
At the core of this transformation is the creation of CoreAI – Platform and Tools, a new division designed to accelerate the development of AI infrastructure, tools, and capabilities. The division will bring together teams from Microsoft's Developer Division, AI Platform, and the Office of the CTO, with the mission to build the AI stack and developer tools that will power both first-party and third-party AI applications.
"This new division will bring together Dev Div, AI Platform, and some key teams from the Office of the CTO (AI Supercomputer, AI Agentic Runtimes, and Engineering Thrive), with the mission to build the end-to-end Copilot and AI stack for both our first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI apps and agents. This group will also build out GitHub Copilot, thus having a tight feedback loop between the leading AI-first product and the AI platform to motivate the stack and its roadmap," Nadella stated in a communication to Microsoft employees on January 13, 2025.
The AI-first application stack will enable developers to create agentic applications, leveraging AI agents that feature memory, entitlements, and actions across a wide range of industries. These agents will be optimized for performance, safety, and efficiency, driving innovations in business processes, roles, and workflows.
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Azure as the Backbone of AI Innovation
According to Nadella, Microsoft's Azure platform will serve as the backbone for these AI applications, offering infrastructure to build and deploy AI tools. Alongside this, tools like GitHub and VS Code will play a crucial role in supporting developers in creating, deploying, and managing AI applications and agents.
Jay Parikh, EVP of CoreAI – Platform and Tools, will lead this new initiative, working closely with leaders across Microsoft to optimize the company's AI technology stack. The division will also integrate feedback from products like GitHub Copilot to refine the platform and accelerate progress.
"Our success in this next phase will be determined by having the best AI platform, tools, and infrastructure. We have a lot of work to do and a tremendous opportunity ahead, and together, I’m looking forward to building what comes next," Nadella concluded.
