23–25 May 2023, Seattle (hybrid). First true return to the Convention Center. The conference where Microsoft stopped describing AI as a feature category and started describing it as a platform shift.
What we took away
- Windows Copilot — a system-level AI sidebar built into Windows 11, capable of taking actions across the OS and apps. The first time we saw a first-party OS-level Copilot pattern.
- Microsoft Fabric unveiled — a unified SaaS analytics platform on top of OneLake, with Copilot baked in at every layer. Microsoft called it "the biggest data product launch since SQL Server."
- Azure AI Studio introduced inside Azure OpenAI Service: ground GPT-4 with private data ("chat with your own data") without a custom RAG stack.
- Shared plugin standard with OpenAI — the same plugin definition works across ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Windows Copilot.
- Copilot Stack developer framework formalised. Dev Home preview, WinGet Configuration for reproducible Windows dev setups.
- .NET 8 Preview 4 with native AOT, Blazor United, and the foundations that would eventually become .NET Aspire.
Why it mattered for us
This is the Build where we started telling Mittelstand customers, in plain German: yes, the AI stack is finally something you can build on, and yes, it can stay in your tenant. Microsoft Fabric in particular changed how we sketch out data-platform pitches.
"We're in the midst of a massive platform shift with the new generation of AI that's going to transform pretty much every sector and every category of computing." — Satya Nadella, Build 2023 keynote.
That sentence aged better than most.
Microsoft Build
Copilot
Microsoft Fabric
Azure AI