Microsoft Goldman Sachs Communicopia + Technology Conference 2026

Of course. Great to be here.

I think that has certainly been one of the questions, and I think thought processes people have gone through. I think what's made Microsoft enduring, but maybe more importantly, what makes it relevant for the next, we'll call it decade at least, is that we have, and have built, a very complete platform. Whether it starts at the infra layer, up to the management layer of the platform, up to apps, and that's maybe been something people are used to. Now what you're seeing is you're adding intelligence into the platform, you're adding intelligence in what we call Work IQ, the intelligence of the Microsoft 365 work, and then on top of that, you're adding an agent layer.

I think in many ways, what you look and see is a company that sort of had a full stack and now has, I would call an even fuller stack as more and more of those pieces have come. We're lucky to be able to have also, I would say, a pretty sophisticated distribution network of partners, and a sales engine that I would argue is highly effective. But even more so, I would say we also have longstanding customers who understand that trust, security, sovereignty, the protection of IP, their IP is a fundamental part of a platform company and the promise. I think we've been a platform company since even before I was there, which must seem like billions of years ago, given how long I've done this.

But what we've always said is that being a platform company meant being able to support and be relied upon to support and supply products with quality and with that trust. So I think when you put together our distribution network, really what we stand for, I would say, with customers in terms of reliability of our positions, and then I would say finally, a pretty sophisticated technical stack. I do feel like that is the way that I think about what defines enduring moats in the software business.

I do think it has changed a bit in the past months. I think the importance of supporting and being relied upon to support multiple models has always been something we have talked about. I think it has gotten more attention more recently in terms of, I think I could be off a little, but I think there is more than 11,000 models supported on the platform. The importance of supporting everything from frontier models and open source all the way down to highly specialized models, some of which are things that our internal MAI team does work on.

I think what Satya is trying to say at least, and at least when I hear the explanation of a frontier ecosystem, is how important it is and always has been, as a platform company, I think this comes more naturally, to have enterprises be able to own their own continuous learning loop and what that means as being able. If that happens in every enterprise, and whether you call that enterprise a small enterprise means big to a lot of people, but it really just means an entity. Whether that entity is small or the entity is very, very big, or whether that entity is a country, it is that if everybody owns and benefits from AI, then the distribution of the economic benefits will accrue across and be broad.

That is what we mean by a frontier, is that the frontier should in fact exist in a breadth way. That in fact grows the TAM available for everyone, but also, I think, reminds people that at the end, what the goal is to have things be better. That includes the economic outcomes to be accrued where the IP is created.

Yeah. It's interesting. I understand the nature of what people are asking you to prognosticate on. I think that also is a challenging prognostication. I do think ultimately what people have always wanted, and I think the way I think about it more, is less that you ought to deliver the best value for the outcome that's needed. If the goal is an outcome, and to get that outcome, you'd like to spend the least amount you can do to be able to gain that outcome, then that's the right way to think about delivery. I think that conversation's already happening more and more with customers as they're focused on the outcome. If the outcome can be, and have a positive ROI to them, then it's worth continuing to do that work. If it doesn't, then it's probably not.