Microsoft wants to build devices that have no apps — only AI agents.
At Build 2026, the company announced Project Solara, a chip-to-cloud platform designed specifically for hardware that runs AI agents as its primary computing primitive. The platform sits on AOSP — Android's open-source foundation — a quietly notable choice given Microsoft's long history of friction with open-source software. Enterprise management runs through Intune and Entra ID, plugging agent-first devices into the same identity and management stack most large organizations already run for Windows. The standout concept is what Microsoft calls "just-in-time UI": interfaces generated on demand by agents rather than shipped as static applications.
The app as the fundamental unit of computing has been the field's bedrock since the 1980s; replacing it with agents is either the biggest architectural rethink since the smartphone or a rebranding exercise with a thin new hardware category bolted on. For enterprise IT the pitch is at least coherent — one management plane for agent-first devices sitting alongside the Windows fleet they already maintain, rather than a separate silo.
The real test is whether any hardware partner ships devices for it, or whether Project Solara joins the long queue of Microsoft platforms that were architecturally interesting and commercially inert.