Agents are business applications now
Modern agents are much like those business applications. Often developed to solve a specific need, but quicky adopted by organizations and refactored to apply enterprise standards (using tools like the Agent Governance Toolkit and frameworks like Microsoft’s Agent Framework), they’re rapidly maturing and are ready to be shared more widely. The process of sharing needs to be curated and controlled, and, if possible, tied to a revenue stream.
There’s certainly some urgency here. Until recently, subsidized tokens have kept costs artificially low. Now companies like GitHub and Anthropic are moving to a more sustainable (for them) pricing model, increasing the cost of inferencing and squeezing companies’ AI budgets. As a result, switching AI projects away from a cost to a revenue source is high on CIOs’ agendas. If those tuned and trained agents can be sold on a marketplace, then that token budget can be justified.
Microsoft has always been a company built on partner relationships, starting with individual developers and working all the way up to the largest software companies and consultancies. That reach is key to helping partners extract as much value as possible from their agents, as it allows Microsoft to integrate its partner sales tools into its own products and services, as well as into other platforms.
Extending the Microsoft Marketplace for AI developers
We’re already familiar with many of Microsoft’s marketplaces, built into individual tools like Teams, into platforms like Microsoft 365 or Visual Studio, or into the Windows Store. Now the company is doing the same for AI developers, extending Microsoft Marketplace to software agents. Announced at Build 2026, the updated Microsoft Marketplace provides ways to publish code—apps and agents—developed across all of Microsoft’s development platforms, including Copilot Studio, opening the marketplace up to traditional and non-traditional developers alike.
