Nadella said security grows even more critical as agents gain access to enterprise data, and Microsoft's approach is to separate intelligence from authority, enforcing permissions, monitoring and containment outside the model.
separate intelligence from authority
All statements by Satya Nadella ›
Nadella said Microsoft's total headcount cost will fall while cost per employee and GPU allocation per researcher rise.
"Our total people cost will go down," he said. "Our cost per head will go up. And my GPU per researcher will go up."
Nadella said Maia 200 already delivers up to 1.7x more tokens per watt and Maia 300 will deliver 40% more tokens per watt than leading GPU systems.
Maia 200 is already delivering up to 1.7 times more tokens per watt across AI experiences in Teams and Copilot. Maia 300 will drive further gains, delivering 40% more tokens per watt compared to leading GPU-based systems.
Nadella said that as AI agents take on higher-value work, consumption-based pricing will unlock business-funded demand tied directly to the value agents deliver, beyond traditional IT-funded budgets.
"Typically, IT funds this, consolidating frontier advances for everyone across the organization," Nadella said of the changing spending models within enterprises. "As agents take on higher-value work, consumption opens up business-funded demand with spending tied directly to the value these agents deliver."
Nadella described Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC) as a policy-driven layer that governs and contains AI agents across Windows and other platforms, with OpenAI, Anthropic and Muse adopting it.
a policy-driven execution layer that governs and contains agents across Windows and other platforms.
Satya Nadella highlighted that users paying for Copilot features on a usage basis grew 75% this quarter, signaling a shift toward usage-based monetization.
CEO Satya Nadella emphasized on the earnings call that the number of users paying for Copilot features based on usage increased by 75% this quarter