Descriptions:
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s EVP of Copilot, Agents, and Platform, sits down with Bloomberg Tech to detail how AI agents have already fundamentally changed how Microsoft builds software — and where the company is taking that transformation next. In Phase 1, software engineers at Microsoft have shifted from writing code manually to overseeing agentic systems that generate it, with their roles reorienting around architecture, evaluation design, and editorial judgment. Even legacy codebases like 25-year-old SharePoint On-Premises are experiencing agentic coding revolutions, Lamanna says, with dramatically accelerated progress.
Phase 2, now underway, extends agents into finance, sales, and HR. Employees in those functions are building their own dashboards and running their own data analysis using Microsoft 365 Copilot rather than waiting on central analytics teams — cutting bottlenecks and enabling faster, better decisions. Lamanna frames this not as headcount reduction but as redeployment: teams are trading efficiency gains for topline growth, investing surplus productivity into product research, customer retention, and employee engagement.
On the commercial side, Lamanna discloses that Microsoft 365 Copilot has surpassed 30 million paid seats — up from 15 million two quarters ago, meaning the product added in six months what had previously taken years to accumulate. Copilot engagement now rivals Outlook and Teams, with per-user conversations more than doubling year-over-year, signaling that enterprise AI has moved decisively from pilot programs into sustained, production-scale adoption across knowledge work.
📺 Source: Bloomberg Tech · Published August 10, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
