What Microsoft’s 2026 Product Plans Reveal About Its AI Push

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for AI Application Development Platforms, underscoring the enterprise focus of Azure AI Foundry. This acknowledgment reflects the company's ongoing commitment to advancing AI technologies in application development.

LG has announced that users will now be able to delete the previously unremovable Microsoft Copilot shortcut on its smart TVs. This change follows the integration of the Copilot app into LG televisions, which had previously been a point of contention among users.

Two dozen leading artificial intelligence companies, including Microsoft and Google, have joined the U.S. federal government's 'Genesis Mission,' initiated by the Trump administration to enhance the application of AI in scientific research and energy projects.

Anthropic has announced the launch of its Agent Skills technology as an open standard, aiming to enhance the capabilities of AI assistants in the enterprise software market. This initiative includes organization-wide management tools and a directory of partner-built skills from notable companies such as Atlassian, Figma, and Canva.

China is advancing its efforts toward chip self-reliance by testing a secret extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography prototype, a critical technology for semiconductor manufacturing, amid increasing export controls and rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Microsoft has reintroduced ontology through its Fabric IQ platform, aiming to clarify its role in artificial intelligence. This initiative seeks to enhance understanding and application of ontology in AI systems, which has been a source of confusion in the tech community.

Microsoft has announced the decommissioning of IntelliCode in Visual Studio Code, effectively ending its free local AI-assisted code completion feature. This shift marks a complete transition of Microsoft's developer AI strategy towards a subscription-based model centered around GitHub Copilot.

The demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is driving a new gold rush for data centers, with power availability becoming a critical factor in their location. Companies are increasingly prioritizing proximity to energy sources over traditional considerations like closeness to urban centers.