Microsoft Build 2026

Intro

I'm Peter and this is the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where you will find insights about Microsoft or related platforms and technology, along with so much more whether you are beginner or an experienced professional or just interested in technology. Keep Current, Keep Coding!

Welcome

Welcome to episode forty of the RoguePlanetoid Podcast about Microsoft Build 2026. Microsoft Build 2026 covered building a frontier intelligence ecosystem and delivering value from frontier developers into applications with AI. I'll be discussing the keynote topics as well as some of the sessions that you can watch along with many others at build.microsoft.com or check out the link in the show notes.

Keynote

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft introduced Microsoft Build 2026 with the question, what do you want to build today and talking about the opportunity for developers and others to build a frontier intelligence ecosystem, and the value that can built on top of that platform as frontier developers. Starting at the edge of Windows the amount of compute there is astounding if you aggregate that there is a lot of power, can deliver unmetered intelligence by using onboard AI using Windows ML and local processing by expanding Windows AI APIs to more PCS with new on device models and local reasoning. There is also the Nvidia RTX Spark which powers the new Surface Laptop Ultra coming this Autumn and for developers there is the Surface RTX Spark DevBox bringing a petaflop of AI compute to the desktop. Kayla talked about the tools they have been working on to make Windows a great place for development that can be free of distractions, with a Start Menu that can be on top, left, right or bottom and get started quickly with the Windows Developer Config for WinGet. Intelligent Terminal with AI features to help get more done along with a whole host of additional utilities available for those who love staying in the command line.

Satya talked about the idea of unmetered intelligence where the driving equation is tokens per dollar per watt and how to think about systems optimisation end-to-end to get the best results, with more data centres being added in the last eighteen months that the first decade of Azure as well as delivering more performance where it counts. Working with Nvidia to create RTX Spark which delivers a revolution in AI that started from a conversation three years ago, which now makes it possible to run a couple of hundred billion parameter model on your local computer designed for agents that need low latency. Steven talked about working and coordinating across entire workflows, devices and timescales with compute offering transformation interaction though Project Solara, where it is not just about one form factor but creating a constellation of devices that work together as one system, whenever and wherever you need them, to provide a system that extends agents onto easy-to-use form factors to extend where computers don't exist or they are not optimal to deliver enterprise readiness with an agent interactive model and just in time UI brought together with AI.

Satya mentioned there are a new set of a platform rules that don't pen in form factor and where your agent lives can re-write the rules and have ubiquitous agents. Microsoft are building a new intelligence layer with the largest catalogue choice of over 11,000 Foundry Models along with providing the storage options needed such as Horizon DB, offering enterprise scale Postgres with higher throughput than self-managed options and data warehouse becoming critical providing the data into the context for AI. Elijah talked about unifying intelligence for every organisation with Microsoft IQ or build and deploy agents in Microsoft 365 grounded in knowledge for the latest information with WebIQ, combine external knowledge with Foundry IQ and use Fabric IQ for enterprise intelligence to create agents that are up-to-date and leverage functionality from Microsoft 365 that is grounded in world, people and information.

Scott and Samantha talked about OpenClaw where Scott has used it to manage things from managing blood sugar to dealing with GitHub issues where Microsoft has been collaborating on a Windows companion app and sandbox for OpenClaw, with a native WinUI app that can access chat and canvas with process isolation and granular security options. Peter, creator of OpenClaw joined to talk about it where you can run OpenClaw inside your company along with bringing your own rules and models which will see it grow into something much bigger and help those who code and those who don't. Cassidy spoke about the GitHub Copilot app which is a the homebase for development where you can kick off agentic coding sessions and use Git Worktrees so agents can work together, without stepping on each other and can see a focused view of activity or actions that can be run locally and in the cloud.

Amanda spoke about integrating agents into business and scaling them including governance outcome from production traces along with agent optimiser to compare candidates such as prompt changes, model changes and more, along with agents that can be controlled to accelerate development from local to enterprise ready where you build an agent and Microsoft handles the rest. Sarah spoke about security scans that can be done and seen in the GitHub App then produce reports of vulnerabilities then create fixes while still having a human in the loop. Mustafa talked about compute to train frontier models has increased a trillion-fold in fifteen years, and an increase of capability and an increase of compute is needed to build a humanist super intelligence to serve people rather than replace people, that prioritises human wellbeing and purpose. There are a variety of models from Microsoft from transcription to image generation that can be deployed in confidence with a full transparent report on how models are put together and co-designing models for the hardware to develop the most efficient and cost-effective agents.

Tanaya talked about tuning models based on workflow where you can deploy a model as-is then fine tune a model to your own dataset, where you can have control with low-level training API and see how training will work and define the tools the AI model will work with, you can have evaluation criteria where you can define how you work with tools and can simulate tools and with frontier tuning, so your agent continuously improves on the way you work. David spoke about advancing research with Microsoft Discovery with many parallels in agentic software development where can write a hypothesis discover what is needed and help make real-world discoveries, where can unify the digital and physical world to embrace a new era in scientific discovery.

Satya ended by talking about progress in Quantum Computing with Majorana 2 which is even more reliable than its predecessor, they are now building out the engineering scale after proving the concept. Satya said it is not about building the next platform but is how do we build this frontier ecosystem together, technology can concentrate power so we need to use this next wave to unlock opportunities in every community, and it is our job to make the second story true and let's all build together.

WinUI

The Keynote kicked off Microsoft Build but was then followed by numerous sessions that offer a deep dive into the concepts and more including one on Building WinUI apps with C# first patterns and AI assisted workflows. WinUI is getting better including performance and memory improvements along with new controls. WinUI is filling feature gaps and have first-party features in Windows using it and third-party support improving with commitment from Microsoft to move WInUI forward, with gaps such as system tray and windowing features being asked for and make it easier to migrate from Windows Forms or mix and match Windows Presentation Foundation.

Development is evolving and AI-assisted development is the new default where code generation is part of every workflow, and dynamic UI with faster interaction and dynamic interfaces with code-first workflows over markup being supported with Reactor, where XAML is still retained as the first class way to build UI, this is a new AI-friendly method with reactive UI patterns that inform WinUI rather than replace it, which is currently being explored and experimented with which will mature into a consistent and standard approach in the future, and may completely change on how to express patterns or where can do imperative or expression construction of code with Reactor.

.NET MAUI

Another session was on Taking your AI to the edge with .NET MAUI, to build multi-platform apps all in one framework to build cross-platform amazing looking apps on Android, iOS, Mac and Windows. .NET MAUI Blazor Hybrid allows you to take Blazor through WebView to .NET MAUI with fully native web UI or for other frameworks there is Hybrid WebView offering choice for client application developers. .NET MAUI team now builds with Copilot to help reproduce bugs, write tests, make fixes and review changes with .NET MAUI specific expertise where still have human in the loop plus beyond writing code can identify if documentation or a blog needs to be written for a feature to do things faster and produce extra value.

.NET MAUI in the community where have contributors for issues, PRs, samples, documentation and feedback to shape the product and community standup to share progress, answer questions and celebrate what people build along with contributors being appreciated. Investments for .NET 10 have included fixes and performance as well as using Roslyn source generators for XAML which will be mandatory in .NET 11 which will also include delivering CoreCLR as the default runtime replacing the Mono runtime, which will bring better performance and foundation for ongoing NativeAoT support across Android, iOS and Mac Catalyst. .NET 11 will also support more controls such as map control, code support in XAML, badges for shell tabs and toolbar items.

ASP.NET Core & Blazor

Building for the agentic web with .NET 11 was another session covering ASP.NET Core and Blazor, as demand on modern web applications keeps going up with users wanting more performance and airtight security, that requires observability on how apps behave in production. Developers want to build more and faster with AI and the platform underneath needs to keep up, .NET 11 is investing in addressing needs of modern web applications including strengthening the foundation with performance, security and observability, simplify building distributed web apps by working with Aspire team so that deploying and integrating with cloud services feels natural and enabling agentic web apps to support new UI patterns for AI-driven experiences to make ASP.NET Core and Blazor the best way to build agentic web applications.

.NET will include fundamentals to make it the fastest ever release including reducing TLS handshake overhead in Kestrel, and ensuring the platform is secure and trustworthy including modernised cross-site request forgery support or adding automatic authentication token refresh. Upgrading to .NET 11 will result in apps running faster, safer and more observable with no code changes required. ASP.NET Core in .NET 11 will also feature the latest OpenAPI with proper support for binary file responses and correlation token support in SignalR. Blazor in .NET 11 will support pause and resume and begin transition to CoreCLR which will be shipped as final in .NET 12.

.NET 11

Finally my last highlighted session was .NET 11 in depth: Runtime, libraries, and SDK for the AI era, with new capabilities and user experiences being created in .NET 11 along with a strong focus on performance across the stack and lightening the load of acquisition, management of tooling including use of dotnet run with enhancements, including making device flows a first-class citizen for .NET MAUI including understanding on how to query devices available with an extensible protocol which could be extended beyond .NET MAUI. .NET CLI needs to work nicely with agents of all kinds so it is now aware of being run under an agent context, which changes the way content is rendered where have static section for project outputs and dynamic portion that would be token inefficient that can be disabled when in an LLM context.

.NET 11 is an ecosystem play where many tools and libraries are not AoT or trim-friendly but with improvements to .NET CLI to be an AoT application has forced investigation into technical and process blockers and start knocking them down. There have also been complete replacements including telemetry libraries that now use OpenTelemetry and having the .NET CLI take advantage of these will have real benefits to end users. Acquisition is being tackled with dotnet up which will deliver a consistent way to acquire and manage .NET toolchains, along with reducing the size of the .NET SDK, by taking advantage of automated unification and deduplication which has yielded incredible results and shaved megabytes from .NET previews for different platforms and SDK payloads.

Conclusion

Microsoft Build 2026 demonstrated the revolution in AI and platform technology since Microsoft Build 2025, to produce powerful agentic workflows to help deliver functionality faster and with more features within Microsoft as well as for developers using Microsoft platforms, such as Azure or Foundry, software such as Windows or OpenClaw and hardware such as those powered by Nvidia RTX Spark to consumers and developers. The keynote was a fantastic introduction, and you can read more about the Microsoft Build 2026 Keynote in my article at rogueplanetoid.com/articles/microsoft-build-2026-keynote or check out the link in the show notes.

Microsoft Build 2026 had many sessions that could not be all covered here but some highlighted enabled developers to understand not only how to leverage AI in their products, but how it is accelerating and enabling many things for Windows developers using WinUI, cross-platform developers using .NET MAUI and web developers using ASP.NET Core and Blazor, all enabled with enhancements and efficiency that will be delivered by .NET 11. You can read about Microsoft Build 2026 sessions I highlighted in my article at rogueplanetoid.com/articles/microsoft-build-2026-sessions or check out the link in the show notes.

Outro

Thanks for listening to the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where each episode you will find insights about Microsoft or related platforms and technology, along with so much more wherever you listen to your podcasts or at rogueplanetoid.com/podcasts for the RoguePlanetoid Podcast whether you are a beginner or an experienced professional or just interested in technology. Keep Current, Keep Coding!