16 MARKETWATCH Microsoft launched an array of new products and services at Ignite in San Francisco, USA, in November 2025. Several of its major updates – the ones designed to empower frontier firms – were highlighted during the opening keynote from chief commercial officer Judson Althoff. Althoff explained four common reasons why AI projects fail: inconsistent alignment between business and IT professionals, data quality issues, regulatory and governance requirements require AI to be observable at all times, and a focus on experimentation over scaling projects. “The frontier firm needs to holistically reimagine their business,” Althoff said. “AI transformation needs to do more for humanity by obsolescing the mundane and unlocking greater creativity.” Althoff then outlined three common traits to successful frontier firms, explaining they put AI in the flow of work, facilitate ubiquitous innovation where everyone can create with AI, and have the ability to govern and manage the AI they deploy. “We need to put the ‘I’ back into ‘AI’,” said Althoff, emphasising intelligence is key to empowering enterprises. Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, introduced the intelligence layer Work IQ, which enables Copilot and agents to “know you, your job and your company”. He said: “Work IQ is the AI that you can trust your most valuable information with. It finds patterns and insights within data, rather than pulling fragments of data that ignores context and relationships.” Roslansky also unveiled two major updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot: dedicated Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents within Copilot Chat, and new capabilities to allow Copilot to interpret and reason across a user’s entire inbox. Microsoft president Asha Sharma also debuted App Builder, which allows anyone to create an app and uses Work IQ for contextual information. “This is the beginning of something new – software made for people, to software being made by people,” she said. “When innovation New Microsoft products and services empower frontier firms At Ignite 2025, Microsoft executives Judson Althoff, Asha Sharma and Charles Lamanna introduced AI tools spanning data, productivity and application development Judson Althoff and Ryan Roslansky speaking at Ignite in San Francisco in November 2025
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