Microsoft unveils Copilot 'super app' with chat, coding and Autopilot agents

Home merges the Copilot Chat and Cowork functions. Jared Spataro, Microsoft's chief marketing officer of AI at work, said Home is where users "get your bearings, keeping you grounded and moving forward: review recent activity, get suggestions on what Copilot can help with, and pick up work right where you left off." Microsoft also plans a Today feature inside Home that works as a personalized dashboard for important emails, meeting requests and Teams threads, according to The Verge. ZDNet reported that Today will not be available immediately; it is set to enter private preview in October in Copilot and will also come to Outlook and Teams.

The Code tab is designed to let non-technical users create apps, trackers, dashboards and automations by describing them in natural language. Microsoft says Code is powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot, runs in a sandboxed environment and can be hosted securely within a customer's Microsoft 365 tenant. Engadget reported that Copilot chooses an approach and builds the requested tool, from simple desktop widgets to data-management dashboards. ZDNet said the resulting apps run directly in Copilot using a new platform called the Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime, managed as part of the Microsoft 365 tenant, and that Microsoft plans to offer third-party tooling and access for professional developers.

Autopilot is Microsoft's rebranding of Scout, the AI personal assistant unveiled at Build earlier this year. Spataro described it as a "digital teammate." The cloud-based agent has its own identity, memory, computer and workspace, and Microsoft says it is built on Microsoft IQ so it understands how an organization works. It appears in Teams, Outlook, chats, channels and documents, where users can @mention it like a colleague, with permissions, audit and governance controls. Spataro said Autopilot lives in a customer's tenant, an enterprise-grade approach that contrasts with agents that have been difficult to bring into corporate environments. CNBC reported that Jacob Andreou, Microsoft's executive vice president for Copilot, acknowledged that adding coding to the app is an instance of Microsoft playing catch-up.

Home and Code will begin rolling out to Microsoft's Frontier program for early access AI features in the coming weeks, while Autopilot will go into private preview later this month. Code will also be in preview for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year.

Microsoft is using usage-based billing for the Cowork, Code and Autopilot portions of the new app, rather than charging only a flat subscription. A regular user subscription license will provide Copilot in Chat and in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. CNBC reported that commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $30 per user per month, and that customers will pay for the new app's Cowork, Code and Autopilot features based on usage. The Verge reported that long-running agentic capabilities or usage of models like Astra and Fable will be billed based on usage. Microsoft is using an auto model picker to match models to tasks, but IT administrators will need to use Microsoft's new FinOps for AI to manage AI spending, according to The Verge. CNBC said users of the coding product can manually select which model to use, including a cost-efficient offering from Microsoft, while the Home tab does not offer a Microsoft model.

Microsoft's push comes as its flagship work AI product has yet to gain broad traction. CNBC reported that of more than 450 million existing commercial Office 365 seats worldwide, fewer than 7% have licenses for the AI addition. The Verge reported that Copilot has failed in the consumer space compared with Claude or ChatGPT, and that the new app is not really designed to compete with products like Meta's Muse; Microsoft is calling it "the AI built for work." CNBC said Meta's Muse app, introduced earlier this month, has shot to the top of Apple's App Store, following the rising popularity of tools like Instinct and the open-source OpenClaw. Microsoft shares were up 3% this year as of Thursday's close, underperforming the Nasdaq and most of the company's megacap peers, CNBC reported. Microsoft is still leaning on leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic even as it invests in its own models, CNBC said.

David McLaren, enterprise data and AI leader at consulting firm GHD, told CNBC that his company has given Microsoft Copilot to 12,000 employees, with around 200 experimenting with Copilot Cowork. He said he is excited for the new app because it makes GitHub-like capability simpler for more people to use. Andreou told CNBC that Microsoft is holding a "very high bar" and that the product is at its best when optimizing for user value and output quality, with cost efficiency less important. At a Wednesday product preview in Seattle, he said the problem is that agents have been almost impossible to bring into the enterprise. Nadella said at the event that the Frontier program is not about any one frontier model but about a frontier ecosystem.

Spataro compared the new Copilot to Microsoft's productivity legacy. "Just as Office defined work for the PC era, the new Copilot is built to define it for the AI era," he said. ZDNet reported that Andreou described Microsoft's consumer base as "a little bit special," noting that roughly 90 million customers pay for Microsoft 365 out of their own pockets and want the full power offered to enterprise users in their personal lives.

Editor's Summary

Microsoft unveiled a redesigned Copilot app that unifies chat, coding and agentic automation in a three-tab interface and moves key features to usage-based pricing. The launch is aimed at Microsoft 365 business customers, where AI license penetration remains low, and intensifies competition with Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI agent providers. Home and Code will reach Frontier early-access users in the coming weeks, while Autopilot enters private preview this month.