A far cry from Windows 11, Project Solara relies on Android to run AI agents instead of the little "appas" we're all familiar with.
The Build conference is an annual event organized by Microsoft. It's a well-known and much-appreciated event for all specialists in the American brand, and has been going on for some time now. In fact, the edition held on June 2 and 3 marked the fifteenth anniversary of Build. Fifteen years is a long time! For the occasion, Microsoft had plenty to present, from MAI, its LLM family, to its eagerly-awaited Majorana 2 quantum chip, as well as a silver GitHub Copilot and a project with a very mysterious name, Solara.
At the heart of this new project launched by Microsoft is a powerful idea: to make the use of a Solara-enabled device more intuitive, more direct, without having to go through dozens of applications to reach the desired functionality. This functionality is not confined to smartphones and their range of possibilities, but concerns a whole host of connected devices. Buoyed by its association with Qualcomm and Mediatek, Microsoft has imagined a chip capable of animating a host of devices designed from the outset to be used in conjunction with artificial intelligence, so that AI agents are no longer "extra", but integrated into the product. Microsoft is talking about everyday objects that are simpler to use and more in tune with a world turned upside down by AI.
Put like that, the objective is intriguing, but also still very vague. Microsoft presented a number of products at Build 2026 to give us a clearer picture. Products that are still only concepts and, of course, bound to evolve. For example, there's this connected speaker with a large front screen. It also incorporates a microphone and speaker. Its operation is very simple: we talk to it as we would to an assistant to ask it about tasks to be accomplished, and it can return our daily agenda. It can also run Copilot or provide access to a Windows PC connected to the cloud. All this must be done as transparently as possible: the man-machine interface revisited and corrected.
The second example is a connected badge designed more for materials handling agents, store clerks or care workers, to give just a few examples. The badge is equipped with a microphone, too, as well as a camera to control access, record a conversation - and listen to it again later or have it summarized by an AI agent - or monitor a delivery or order. In fact, for the moment, Project Solara is more of a declaration of intent: Microsoft is counting on these concept products to showcase what Project Solara can achieve, and the company has announced that it is already working with several major American names (AccuWeather, Best Buy, CVS Health, Target) to come up with concrete cases that will then serve as benchmarks. Project Solara is clearly only at the beginning of its journey, but with artificial intelligence at the very heart of the system's operation, it's perfectly in tune with the times.
