Microsoft is rebuilding Copilot around three persistent agent experiences — Home, Code and Autopilot — backed by a new tenant-hosted Copilot Managed Runtime, a Copilot Credits usage layer and expanded access to third-party frontier models. The overhaul, announced on September 25, 2026, begins rolling out to Microsoft 365 Frontier customers over the coming weeks and broadens Copilot from a chat surface into a system for always-on agentic work.
Home, Code and Autopilot
Home is Copilot's new landing surface, unifying Chat and Cowork modes with recent activity and one-click resumption, and pulling Word, Excel and PowerPoint directly into the Copilot canvas with @mentions, real-time collaboration and role-specific "Skills" for finance and legal workflows. Code is a natural-language app builder for dashboards, automation and internal apps, powered by GitHub Copilot technology and running inside a sandboxed, tenant-hosted environment. Autopilot is a cloud-hosted persistent agent with its own identity and workspace that can be @mentioned from Teams, Outlook or documents to shepherd supplier reviews, scheduling and multi-step follow-ups end-to-end.
Managed Runtime and Copilot Credits
The three experiences run on the Copilot Managed Runtime, a public preview platform for hosting Copilot apps and agents inside a Microsoft 365 tenant boundary with Microsoft Entra identity, Git-backed version control, an SDK and CLI. On top, Microsoft is layering a usage-based Copilot Credits currency that meters Cowork, Code, Autopilot and frontier-model calls; existing Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions cover everyday AI, while credits handle burstier agentic workloads with tenant-, group- and user-level budgets set from the admin center. Included models span OpenAI's GPT-5.6, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5, with Claude Opus 5 planned under limits and more labs and open-weight models on deck.
Why it matters
The refresh is Microsoft's answer to a market where standalone agent stacks — Anthropic's Claude, Cognition's Devin and OpenAI's ChatGPT enterprise flows — have started pulling white-collar tasks out of Microsoft 365. Autopilot's tenant-scoped persistent agents, plus Managed Runtime's Entra-authenticated deployment, are pitched as governance features enterprises can point at when explaining why work stays inside their Microsoft footprint.
Wider industry moves in the same week made the pitch land harder: Cognition's Devin crossed a $1B ARR run-rate, Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5.5, and Salesforce unveiled its Trusted Enterprise AI harness, each pressing Microsoft on where the persistent agent for enterprise work actually lives.
Timeline
Home rolls out to Frontier customers in the coming weeks, with Code hitting Frontier by end of month and reaching Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers in preview later in 2026. Autopilot expands to private preview by end of September, with Copilot inside Teams following in the same window. Microsoft will detail the remaining agent, developer and admin bits at Ignite in San Francisco on November 17-20, 2026.
Reporting based on coverage from Microsoft, Unite.AI and the Microsoft Official Blog.