Microsoft is supporting the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source protocol created by Anthropic, which is backed by Google. According to Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, MCP could foster an "agentic web" akin to the way hypertext protocols facilitated the spread of the internet in the 1990s. This announcement was made ahead of Microsoft's annual Build conference in Seattle on May 19, 2025, where the company is expected to present its latest AI development tools.

Scott emphasized Microsoft's commitment to promoting industry-wide standards that enable AI agents from various companies to collaborate effectively. These AI agents are designed to independently handle specific tasks, such as software bug fixes. Scott believes that MCP will empower innovation in the agentic web, driven by a broader range of ideas rather than being limited to a few leading companies.

Microsoft is also working on enhancing the memory capabilities of AI agents, which currently tend to be very transactional. To address the high costs associated with improving AI agent memory due to increased computing power demands, Microsoft is exploring structured retrieval augmentation. This approach involves an agent extracting concise summaries of each interaction with a user, creating a roadmap of the conversation. Scott likened this process to how the human brain is trained, emphasizing that it avoids brute-force processing for every problem.