Microsoft released Scout, an enterprise-grade AI agent, at Build 2026. This product integrates with the Microsoft 365 office suite, reading work information from Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint, and continuously handling tasks such as meeting coordination, scheduling, and task management in the background.
No longer relying on asking questions one by one
Unlike typical chatbots, Scout is categorized by Microsoft as "Autopilot." Instead of relying on repeated questioning as its primary interaction method, it operates continuously within the scope of enterprise authorization, helping employees manage cross-time zone meeting arrangements, follow up on stalled tasks, and allocate time for scheduling.
Built on OpenClaw
Scout uses the open-source proxy framework OpenClaw at its core. Released in January 2026, the project was initially positioned as a personal proxy tool that could run locally. Microsoft states that OpenClaw garnered 180,000 GitHub stars approximately three months after its launch.
Instead of creating a separate, closed framework, Microsoft developed Scout on top of OpenClaw and stated that it will contribute enterprise-level policy control capabilities back to the open-source project. For Microsoft, this not only shortens product launch time but also helps improve enterprise customer acceptance by leveraging the open-source ecosystem.
Work IQ API to be released simultaneously
In addition to Scout, Microsoft also announced that the Work IQ API will be officially launched on June 16. This interface is used to build real-time work models within enterprises, extracting organizational operational information from emails, calendars, meetings, documents, and collaboration activities.
Microsoft states that Fortune 500 companies possess an average of over 600 TB of related data. According to its testing, the Work IQ API processes data twice as fast as the traditional Microsoft 365 API while reducing token usage by 80%. This capability is primarily aimed at developers creating enterprise agent applications on the Microsoft platform.
Currently, it is only being tested with a select group of customers.
In his Build 2026 keynote address, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that agents will become "the operating system of work." Alongside Scout, new execution containers and native model support for AI agents were also announced, further positioning Windows as the runtime environment for AI agents.
Currently, Scout is available for private beta testing to select customers and the Microsoft Frontier project. Installation and integration require Intune policy configuration, opt-in verification, and a GitHub Copilot license.
