Microsoft Expands Copilot With App-Building and Autonomous Work Tools

Microsoft on Friday unveiled a revamped version of its Copilot software, combining its chat, coding, and agentic capabilities into a single package it calls Autopilot. The platform is designed as a one-stop shop for work needs such as preparing a pitch document or building a spreadsheet and then having AI reason over the data to surface insights users might miss. CEO Satya Nadella told Deirdre Bosa that trust will be the biggest issue for the company, asking whether users can really trust AI with all of their credentials when it performs autonomous activity and how they can feel in control, adding that in the enterprise this is everything. The new Copilot offers two billing options: standard per-user plans for general AI work and a pay-as-you-go offering for long-tail, multi-step agentic work, a combination Nadella said will prove especially beneficial as model makers and providers slowly reduce customer subsidies. Microsoft says Copilot will automatically route user prompts to the best available model from OpenAI and Anthropic, with manual model selection also available and additional options from other model makers to come; the per-seat option will carry token limits that most people will never hit, while those needing more can opt for usage-based billing.

Meta used its Meta Connect event to unveil the Muse Charm, a standalone pocket device built exclusively for voice interaction with the company's new Muse agent, alongside a major push into what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called Personal Superintelligence. The Muse Charm debut came late Wednesday, and Meta also showed off the Meta VR Glasses, a 100-gram spatial computing headset priced at $1,299 with 5K micro-OLED displays, tethered puck processing, and native eye and hand tracking, plus the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses starting at an entry-level $249 and camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses for open-ear listening and AI voice interaction. Meta's Muse has amassed more than 3.4 million downloads since its Sept. 8 launch, according to new Sensor Tower data obtained by Yahoo Finance, including 2.8 million in its first two weeks, versus 3.7 million for OpenAI's ChatGPT, 400,000 for SpaceXAI's Grok, and 300,000 for Anthropic's Claude over the same 14 days post-launch. Meta stock has surged 14% in the past five days, even as it trades on a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22 times, below its long-term average of 23.1 times, with 2027 EPS estimates still well below levels seen 90 days ago. Citi analyst Ronald Josey said the firm emerges from Meta Connect incrementally positive on Meta shares, calling Muse the centerpiece of Meta's AI product strategy as voice, additional distribution points through Meta Glasses, and services across shopping, travel, and productivity verticals could unlock incremental monetization opportunities.