TLDR
- Microsoft unveiled Project Solara, a family of AI-native devices that run agents instead of traditional apps
- The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, powered by Nvidia, can run a 120-billion parameter AI model locally
- Microsoft’s new MAI Thinking-1 reasoning model matched Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 in performance
- AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said Anthropic is “extremely expensive” and Microsoft aims to cut its own spending on the company
- Microsoft struck a deal with Mayo Clinic to build frontier healthcare AI
Microsoft held its annual Build developer conference in San Francisco on June 2, revealing a broad push to move computing away from traditional apps toward AI agents.
CEO Satya Nadella and other executives laid out a strategy to control more of the AI stack â from hardware to models â as competition with OpenAI and Anthropic heats up.
Microsoft stock (MSFT) trades on the Nasdaq. The company has not announced a specific stock price catalyst tied to the event, but the announcements represent a wide shift in its product and AI strategy.
Project Solara is a family of prototype devices that range in size from a smart speaker to a keycard badge. Built on chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek, these devices skip traditional operating systems entirely and run AI agents instead.
Nadella framed it as a chance to “rewrite the rules” of how new platforms operate, giving developers and enterprises flexibility to build agent-driven form factors.
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box
On the PC side, Microsoft showed off the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, loaded with Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip. Nadella called it a “dream machine” and said he was personally on the wait list.
The machine ran a 120-billion parameter AI model locally â something most current PCs cannot do. Microsoft also launched a laptop with Nvidia this week, targeting the premium PC market that Apple currently dominates.
Analysts noted enterprise adoption of the new machines may take time.
Microsoft also said it is working to make OpenClaw â open-source software for directing groups of AI agents â safe for corporate use on Windows. The software has already helped Apple sell more Mac computers in China.
MAI Thinking-1 and the Anthropic Dig
Microsoft’s AI unit released MAI Thinking-1, its first in-house reasoning model, which the company says matches Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6. Anthropic has since released Opus 4.8.
The model is part of Microsoft’s push to build frontier AI independent of OpenAI, which it has backed for years. A renegotiated agreement in April freed Suleyman’s team to develop its own models.
AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman was direct about the competition. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said: “Anthropic is extremely expensive, and I think many people are urgently looking for alternatives.”
He added: “We pay a lot of money to Anthropic â so our goal is to reduce and ultimately eliminate that cost.”
Microsoft said its new coding model can match Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 at a lower price point â framing cost as a key competitive edge.
Appian CEO Matt Calkins noted the wider pricing picture: “We are in the era of subsidies for AI. When OpenAI and Anthropic go public, these prices will probably increase substantially.”
Anthropic filed its IPO prospectus confidentially with the SEC this week. OpenAI is expected to file shortly.
On the healthcare front, Microsoft announced a deal with Mayo Clinic to build frontier healthcare AI, combining Microsoft’s compute and reasoning capabilities with Mayo’s clinical data.
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