Microsoft to roll out new autonomous AI agents next month, fending off challenge from Salesforce
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at a company event on artificial intelligence technologies in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 30, 2024.
Dimas Ardian | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON — Microsoft will allow businesses to start making their own autonomous artificial intelligence agents starting next month, taking the fight back to Salesforce, which introduced its own configurable agentic AI tools in September.
At its “AI Tour” event in London on Monday, Microsoft revealed plans to allow organizations to create their own autonomous agents within Copilot Studio, the U.S. tech giant’s platform for customizing and building so-called “copilot” assistants.
These agents had previously been available in private preview after Microsoft announced them initially in May. Starting next month, they’ll move into public preview, meaning more organizations can start building AI agents of their own.
AI agents can act as virtual workers that can carry out a series of tasks without supervision. They are touted as a major evolution of large language model-based AI from chat interfaces, creating an experience that blends more seamlessly into the background.
Beyond adding the ability to create autonomous agents in Copilot Studio, Microsoft said it would also launch 10 new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365, the company’s suite of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management apps.
Microsoft plans to introduce new agents in Dynamics 365 for sales, service, finance and supply chain teams.
How can AI agents be used?
Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of modern work and business applications, on Monday displayed an example of an AI agent developed at consulting firm McKinsey.
The agent was shown as it parsed out an email to find out what the communication is about, checked its history, mapped it to industry-standard terms, and then found the right person in the firm to take the next step before writing and summarizing a response.
It may seem like “magic,” but the firm was able to develop its own AI agent just by using human language, not programming languages, according to Spataro.
Microsoft demonstrated how its autonomous AI agents work. In this example, a customer service agent receives a request for help on an order. The agent collects contextual data on the order and compares the issue with other common product problems. Then, after retrieving all the information, the AI sends a follow-up email.
Microsoft
“We’re excited about this because of the business value it can drive,” he noted, adding that McKinsey found it could reduce lead time by as much as 90%.
Competition is fierce
Microsoft is doubling down on AI agents at a time when competition is intensifying up in the red-hot artificial intelligence space.
Last month, at its annual Dreamforce showcase in San Francisco, Salesforce showed off a new platform called Agentforce, which allows enterprise organizations to spin up their own AI agents.
Zahra Bahrololoumi, Salesforce’s CEO of U.K. and Ireland, criticized the copilot model of AI assistants as not serving the needs of enterprises that well.
“All of these copilots activated on the edge, or in email — they’re not connected to or grounded within the context of customer data,” Bahrololoumi told CNBC in an interview earlier this month. “How is it going to represent a company accurately and responsibly? It isn’t.”
“I think we won’t see so many copilots for enterprise AI activity,” she added. “I’m not saying copilots won’t exist for other purposes. But in the context of enterprise, for autonomous enterprises to be able to plan, execute and take action — you’re no longer in Copilot there.”
Microsoft declined to comment on Bahrololoumi’s remarks when contacted by CNBC.
Microsoft and Salesforce have a storied feud. Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff once called on European regulators to investigate Microsoft’s deal to buy LinkedIn, suggesting it was in breach of competition rules.
AI deal with UK government
Separately, Microsoft also on Monday announced it had struck a five-year deal with the U.K. government to offer public sector organizations access to its AI tools.
Through an agreement with the Crown Commercial Service, the procurement agency of the U.K. government, Microsoft said it will allow public sector organizations to access its Microsoft 365 productivity tool suite, the Azure cloud platform and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a service offered by the tech giant that embeds generative AI into its suite of productivity apps.
Technology
Trump approves TikTok deal through executive order, Vance says business valued at $14 billion
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order approving a proposal that would keep TikTok alive in the U.S. in a transaction that Vice President JD Vance said values the business at $14 billion.
The deal satisfies the requirements of a national security law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban in the country, according to the executive order. Under the terms, which China must still approve, a new joint-venture company will oversee TikTok’s U.S. business, with ByteDance retaining less than a 20% stake.
Enterprise tech giant Oracle, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi-based MGX investment fund will be main investors in TikTok’s U.S. business, controlling a roughly 45% stake in the entity, while ByteDance investors and new holders will own 35%, CNBC’s David Faber reported earlier Thursday.
No representatives from ByteDance were present at the signing, and the company hasn’t acknowledged that a transaction is taking place. No purchase price was mentioned, and there’s no indication that the Chinese government has made changes to laws that would be necessary for a deal to take place.
President Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping gave the deal the go ahead. Vance said the Chinese government put up some resistance before the agreement.
Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the app’s security operations and continue providing cloud computing services for the new TikTok U.S. firm, Faber reported, citing sources familiar with the deal. Trump said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is involved in the ownership group and that his company is “playing a very big part.”
“It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” Trump said at the signing. “This is going to be American operated all the way.”
ByteDance investors like General Atlantic, Susquehanna and Sequoia, are expected to contribute equity in the new TikTok U.S. entity, sources told Faber. ByteDance was reportedly valued at $330 billion last month. Analysts have previously estimated TikTok’s U.S. operations could be worth between $30 billion to $35 billion.
The deal does not involve the federal government taking an equity stake or a so-called golden share in TikTok’s U.S. operations, CNBC reported Monday.
Trump said over the weekend that conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch could be involved in the TikTok deal as well as Ellison and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.
The president last week signed an executive order that extended ByteDance’s deadline to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or be subject to a national security law originally signed by former President Joe Biden. The order prevents the Department of Justice from enforcing the national security law that would penalize app store operators like Apple and Google and internet service providers for providing services to TikTok’s U.S. operations.
WATCH: White House Press Secretary says Trump will sign TikTok deal.
Technology
Microsoft cuts off cloud services to Israeli military unit after report of storing Palestinians’ phone calls
Microsoft President Brad Smith, left, speaks at a press conference on future visions for the development and application of artificial intelligence in education in North Rhine-Westphalia at the Representation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Berlin on June 4, 2025. To his right is Hendrik Wüst (CDU), Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, in front of the sign “From coal to AI.”
Soeren Stache | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Microsoft said Thursday that it has stopped providing certain services to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The company did not say which specific services it had stopped providing.
The decision comes after the software company investigated an August report from The Guardian saying the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.
“While our review is ongoing, we have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, wrote in an email to employees. “This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services.”
Microsoft’s decision to stop providing those services follows pressure from employees who have protested Israel’s use of the company’s software as part of its invasion of Gaza. Over the last few weeks, Microsoft has fired five employees who participated in protests at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
The move comes a week after a United Nations commission said that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians with its invasion of Gaza.
Microsoft told Israeli defense officials that it had decided to disable cloud-based storage an artificial intelligence subscriptions the agency was using, Smith wrote. He said Microsoft does not look at customer data for the type of review it conducted, and he thanked the British newspaper for its reporting on the development.
“As employees, we all have a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust,” Smith wrote.
On Thursday The Guardian reported that unnamed intelligence sources had said Unit 8200 was planning to migrate its supply of the phone calls to Amazon Web Services, the market-leading public cloud. AWS did not immediately comment.
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