Microsoft Build 2026: the 7 biggest announcements

Microsoft just kicked off Build 2026 with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella and other company leaders. As expected, it was filled with announcements, ranging from new Surface hardware to an always-on personal assistant and updates across Microsoft’s in-house AI models. If you didn’t watch the event live, you can catch up on all the latest news in the roundup below. The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is geared toward developers who want to run local AI models on their device, serving as a substitute for Qualcomm’s canceled dev kit . It comes equipped with Nvidia’s new Arm-based Spark RTX chip and 128GB of unified memory, along with pre-installed apps like Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot. The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box also has a preconfigured version of Windows 11 Pro with dark mode enabled by default, a simplified taskbar, and no widgets. Microsoft hasn’t revealed pricing or the full list of specs yet, but the device will be available in the US later this year. The new Intelligent Terminal. Screenshot: The Verge Microsoft is taking steps to make Windows more developer-friendly. That includes the addition of Coreutils, which the company describes as “Linux-like command-line utilities that run natively” on Windows 11. It’s also launching the ability to create, run, and interact with Linux containers through its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), along with a new Intelligent Terminal that provides context to a developer’s preferred AI-powered agent. …