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A team from Microsoft showed off a strange project during Microsoft Build 2026: two devices that don't launch any apps. According to GeekWire, which was given an early demo in Redmond, the project is called Solara, and it runs on Android rather than Windows. For a company that built its empire on Windows, this is already a statement.

Concretely, Solara is a “chip-to-cloud” platform, in other words which goes from the device chip to Microsoft’s Azure servers. The idea: instead of opening software, we invoke an AI agent which carries out tasks for you.

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The system behind all this is not Windows but MDEP (Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform), an enterprise version of Android that Microsoft already uses for its Teams meeting room terminals. The choice is made: run these devices on small, low-power hardware, while retaining the management and security tools that IT services demand.

A badge and a desktop hub, not a smartphone

The first two prototypes set the tone. The first is a desktop hub, a small device that looks like a connected clock, placed next to the PC. It responds to your voice, recognizes your face to identify you, and brings up the urgent things of the day. Connected to a screen, it transforms into a complete Windows machine running in the cloud. The second, more surprising, is a revisited employee badge: a fingerprint button wakes the agent with one press, a tap records and transcribes a conversation, and an integrated camera lets the agent react to what you see.

On the hardware side, the hub is based on an IoT chip from MediaTek and the badge on silicon for wearables from Qualcomm, whose boss Cristiano Amon also took the stage with Satya Nadella. Steven Bathiche, the Microsoft executive leading the project, sums up the vision bluntly: according to Engadget, he describes “the next computer” not as a single device, but as a set of devices working together, with the agent appearing where it is needed.

Marketing vs reality: it’s very early

Where you have to keep a cool head: these are concepts, not products. Microsoft is planning pilots in the coming months with big names like Best Buy, CVS Health, Levi's, Target or AccuWeather, but these are reference designs aimed at businesses, not a consumer gadget to pre-order. Microsoft itself recognizes that the project is very early: according to GeekWire, Nadella pushed the team to show it to Build much earlier than usual, a sign of the pressure of the moment.

The annoying question is also: how does the hub differ from an Amazon Echo? Bathiche's answer is that Alexa is a single agent that tries to do everything, whereas Solara runs the agents specific to each company, managed by its IT department. And Microsoft is not alone in this field: GeekWire points out that Google, Amazon and OpenAI are all chasing the same idea of devices designed for AI, the agent phone that OpenAI is preparing also based on MediaTek and Qualcomm chips.

Solara is less a product than a bet: that the next “computer” will be neither a PC nor a smartphone, but a constellation of objects controlled by agents. It’s attractive on stage, and it’s aimed primarily at businesses, not your living room. The real question is not whether the demo impresses, but whether anyone really wants to wear a badge that films what they see all day long.