Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary with a bold declaration of its future direction: placing artificial intelligence at the centre of how software is built, starting with developers.
Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella used the milestone event to unveil a suite of new AI-powered tools aimed at transforming coding and accelerating global innovation.
“What started out as a developer tools company 50 years ago is now a platform company where everyone can be a developer,” Nadella said in his speech last week. “Our future will not be defined by what we have built but by what we empower others to build.”
Nadella announced the immediate rollout of Agent Mode in Visual Studio Code, a new capability that introduces autonomous AI agents designed to assist developers in real time.
These agents, described as “peer programmers”, can anticipate a developer’s needs, suggest solutions, and help bring ideas to life more creatively and efficiently.
“You really know you’re on to something — intelligence has been commoditised when CEOs can start vibe coding,” Nadella joked. “But in all seriousness, this is not just a cool party trick. It’s transformational. It’s empowering. It’s unleashing human ambition. And it’s happening now.”
In addition to Agent Mode, Microsoft also launched a Code Review Agent that can automatically detect and fix bugs in code. Nadella positioned these innovations as just the beginning of a broader push to democratise AI development.
“We’re also making it easier than ever before for developers to build their own agents in Azure AI Foundry,” he said. “Think of it like an agent factory — it’s a production line for intelligence.”
He added that tens of thousands of organisations are already using Foundry, and Microsoft is expanding its capabilities with a new agent framework for building multi-agent systems, alongside tools for evaluations, fine-tuning, red teaming, and vulnerability detection — all aimed at enabling developers to create trustworthy AI systems.
Nadella paid tribute to Microsoft’s co-founders — Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and former CEO Steve Ballmer — and their vision that started the company’s journey with a BASIC interpreter for the Altair computer.
“Fifty years ago, Bill and Paul started Microsoft with a simple but powerful idea: to build technology so people everywhere could build more technology,” he said. “That idea jumpstarted the PC revolution and created an entirely new sector for our economy.”
Today, Nadella said Microsoft’s mission remains unchanged — but it has expanded to meet the needs of a world shaped by artificial intelligence.
“We are leading this new wave of AI innovation… and putting the power in people’s hands so that they can build software that moves their communities and their countries forward,” he said.
As Microsoft looks to its next 50 years, the company is betting that AI-powered coding and intelligent tools will shape not just its future but the way the world builds technology.