“We’re building Copilot as a new operating system,” says Satya Nadella, even as Microsoft removes it from Windows 11.
Hours after writing about merging Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot identities, CEO Satya Nadella revealed what Redmond wants this unified co-pilot to become. The company has revealed its biggest Copilot update yet, bringing Home, Code, and Autopilot into one app while adding Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into the “super app.”
In his typical no-nonsense style, Nadella mentioned Copilot as a “new operating system for work” covering models, devices and tasks, and we can’t help but remember how the company introduced Windows as an “agent operating system” just a year ago, which triggered a significant backlash from Windows users, forcing Windows chief Pavan Davuluri to lock down replies to his post.
Either Redmond has stopped caring about the backlash, like how they recently reversed the ban on “Microslop”, or they think Copilot is finally good enough to make a reputation for itself.
Well, at first glance, it’s the latter that matches the image, and at the time of writing, Nadella’s post had already surpassed one million views.
Satya Nadella says Copilot is a ‘new operating system for work’
Without once mentioning Windows 11, Nadella says: “We are building Copilot as a new operating system for work that covers all models, all form factors and all tasks. »
Yes, the new Copilot update is massive, and it’s no longer a chatbot. But why mention it as an OS? Well, Microsoft believes that, just like an operating system, the Copilot app, with its four major new additions, can essentially be the one-stop destination for getting your work done.
- Home This is where you can start, with Chat and Cowork.
- Desk applications, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, can now be used in Copilot.
- Code helps you build apps using Copilot and host them in your company’s tenant.
- Autopilot is the full-fledged agent that achieves your goals and keeps working.
The home will display your recent activity, your suggestions, and a way to resume work already started. Chat is where you can ask quick questions and write drafts; Cowork handles delegated work in multiple stages, and Microsoft claims that Copilot will eventually automatically route a request between Chat, Cowork, and Code instead of making you choose the mode yourself, which is huge if true!
Word, Excel and PowerPoint are complete applications in Copilot. Whatever changes you make to a document or spreadsheet will be synced with normal Office apps and your colleagues will be able to continue editing files as usual.
Home also gets Today, which shows relevant emails, meetings, Teams conversations, and tasks. without you asking. This is what I always had in mind when thinking about an AI assistant.
Code turns Copilot into an app builder
Microsoft is not positioning the new Copilot Code feature only for programmers. The idea is that you can describe an app, tracker, dashboard, or workflow in plain English, and Copilot builds it.
Until now, to share an idea, we created documents, spreadsheets and presentations. They are part of our muscle memory. Now with CodeMicrosoft expects us to add a fourth object by giving us the ability to create small applications designed for specific tasks, like desktop widgets for quick reference or interactive dashboards.
The code runs on the same technology that powers GitHub Copilot, runs in a sandbox, and can be hosted in a company’s own tenant through Copilot Managed Runtime. Microsoft IQ provides business context and plugins connect the application to relevant business data.
When Microsoft engineer emeritus David Fowler declared that “typing code was absolutely over,” that’s where he was headed. Microsoft makes it as easy as possible for everyone, and we recently spotted them letting Copilot build native WinUI apps in around 30 minutes.
Of course, we have to take everything with a grain of salt, because even though Microsoft says the code “allows everyone to create their own solutions”, access is still being rolled out and we don’t have any test data yet.
Autopilot is like a colleague
Autopilot was previously called Scoutthat Microsoft presented during Build. You can give an autopilot a name, a role, and a goal, and it can monitor channels, track conversations, run recurring work, and resume a project a few days later.
Note that Autopilot runs in the cloud within an organization’s Microsoft 365 environment, with its own identity, memory, computer, and workspace. They can appear in Teams, Outlook, channels and documents, and be marked as a colleague, with permissions, auditing and governance, all under the organization’s control through Agent 365.
Autopilot grew out of Microsoft’s work on OpenClaw, the open-source personal AI agent that went viral earlier this year. Interestingly, Nadella once compared it to “a virus.”
However, with Autopilot, Microsoft takes the useful idea of persistent personal agents and allows businesses to manage it properly.
Microsoft was racing against time to deliver the new Copilot app before the end of September
At Build 2026 in June, Nadella said Microsoft would bring Chat, Cowork, and Code into a single Copilot super app by summer.
During the July 29 earnings call, he told investors the pieces would come together this quarter, which ends September 30. Sure, the Friday, September 25 announcement met the deadline, but most of what was announced still arrives in pieces.
The code expands within Frontier at the end of the month, Autopilot enters private preview at the end of September, and Office in Copilot will roll out to consumers and Frontier customers in the coming weeks.
Copilot now has a new pricing model as autonomous AI costs more
If you want to know how much the new Copilot experience costs, start by determining how much you’ll need, because Copilot now charges in two different ways.
- A normal per-user subscription covers daily use, including Chat and Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, with template selection managed automatically.
- The most expensive agentic workloads, Cowork, Code, and Autopilot, as well as pioneering models like OpenAI’s Astra and Anthropic’s Claude Fable, operate on usage-based billing.
Usage-based services are disabled by default, and administrators can set spending limits through Microsoft. FinOps tools. The company is moving to a pay for the work done by the agent model is what Nadella previewed during the July earnings call.
Microsoft is finally catching up with AI applications that have ceased to be chatbots
In less than 2 years, the AI industry has already evolved rapidly in this direction. OpenAI Codex now supports long-running coding jobs and multi-agent workflows through its Agents API. Anthropic has added Cowork and Claude Code, with Claude able to work on Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other professional files.
Even Google has pushed Gemini toward using background computers and agents, and more is to come as they bank on the new Googlebook laptops, which also featured Microsoft Copilot.
Interestingly, Microsoft was early in the AI assistant race, but took the brunt of the blame, leading to global backlash. A user expressed the same concerns as me: “You will be the first to adopt every new technology, but scaling is always a problem. »
Microsoft’s new operating system for work is not Windows 12
I didn’t find any mockups with the Windows 11 UI in the entire Copilot announcement. What’s changed here is that Microsoft has replaced the existing chatbot-style Copilot app with Home, Code, Autopilot, and Office integration.
There’s no operating system here, but if you’re keen to see one, the leaked Project Aion was a Copilot-centric operating system concept that Microsoft explored in 2024, running on a stripped-down codebase called Win3 with no Start menu, no desktop icons, and a shell built in a modified version of Edge.
Microsoft is trying to change people’s perception of an AI application. And surprisingly, Satya Nadella’s post didn’t garner backlash like the company’s posts used to about a year ago.
What do you think of “Copilot” now?
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