Microsoft will raise Microsoft 365 and Office 365 prices in July 2026, citing new AI and security upgrades for business and government users.

The post Microsoft to Hike Office Prices in 2026, Citing Major AI and Security Overhauls appeared first on TechRepublic.

Microsoft will raise Microsoft 365 and Office 365 prices in July 2026, citing new AI and security upgrades for business and government users.

The post Microsoft to Hike Office Prices in 2026, Citing Major AI and Security Overhauls appeared first on TechRepublic.

Read AI, which made its mark analyzing online meetings and messages, is expanding its focus beyond the video call and the email inbox to the physical world, in a sign of the growing industry trend of applying artificial intelligence to offline and spontaneous work data.

The Seattle-based startup on Wednesday introduced a new system called Operator that captures and analyzes interactions throughout the workday, including impromptu hallway conversations and in-person meetings in addition to virtual calls and emails, working across a wide range of popular apps and platforms. 

With the launch, Read AI is releasing new desktop clients for Windows and macOS, and a new Android app to join its existing iOS app and browser-based features.

For offline conversations — like a coffee chat or a conference room huddle — users can open the Read AI app and manually hit record. The system then transcribes that audio and incorporates it into the company’s AI system for broader insights into each user’s meetings and workday.

It comes as more companies bring workers back to the office for at least part of the week. According to new Read AI research, 53% of meetings now happen in-person or without a calendar invite — up from 47% in 2023 — while a large number of workday interactions occur outside of meetings entirely.

In a break from others in the industry, Operator works via smartphone in these situations and does not require a pendant or clip-on recording device. 

“I don’t think we’d ever build a device, because I think the phones themselves are good enough,” said Read AI CEO David Shim in a recent interview, as featured on this week’s GeekWire Podcast.

This differs from hardware-first competitors like Limitless and Plaud, which require users to purchase and wear dedicated devices to capture “real-world” audio throughout the day.

While these companies argue that a wearable provides a frictionless, “always-on” experience without draining your phone’s battery, Read AI is betting that the friction of charging and wearing a separate gadget is a bigger hurdle than simply using the device you already have.

To address the privacy concerns of recording in-person chats, Read AI relies on user compliance rather than an automated audible warning. When a user hits record on the desktop or mobile app, a pop-up prompts them to declare that the conversation is being captured, via voice or text. On mobile, a persistent reminder remains visible on the screen for the duration of the recording.

Founded in 2021 by David Shim, Robert Williams, and Elliott Waldron, Read AI has raised more than $80 million and landed major enterprise customers for its cross-platform AI meeting assistant and productivity tools. It now reports 5 million monthly active users, with 24 million connected calendars to date.

Operator is included in all of Read AI’s existing plans at no additional cost.

Google Calendar now lets you block time for Google Tasks with busy status, auto-decline, and DND settings, making deep work easier and more intentional.

The post New Google Calendar Update Makes Deep Work Easier Than Ever appeared first on TechRepublic.

Satya Nadella recently foreshadowed a major shift in the company’s business — saying the tech giant will increasingly build its products and infrastructure not just for human users, but for autonomous AI agents that operate as a new class of digital workers.

“The way to think about the per-user business is not just per user, it’s per agent,” the Microsoft CEO said during his latest appearance on Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast.

At its Ignite conference this week, the company is starting to show what that means. Microsoft is unveiling a series of new products that give IT departments a way to manage and secure their new AI workforce, in much the same way as HR oversees human employees.

The big announcement: Microsoft Agent 365, a new “control plane” that functions as a central management dashboard inside the Microsoft 365 Admin Center that IT teams already use. 

Its core function is to govern a company’s entire AI workforce — including agents from Microsoft and other companies — by giving every agent a unique identification. This lets companies use their existing security systems to track what agents are doing, control what data they can access, and prevent them from being hacked or leaking sensitive information.

Microsoft’s approach addresses what has become a major headache for businesses in 2025: “Shadow AI,” with employees turning to unmanaged AI tools at growing rates. 

It also represents a big opportunity for the tech industry, as tech giants look to grow revenue to match their massive infrastructure investments. The AI agent market is expanding rapidly, with Microsoft citing analyst estimates of 1.3 billion agents by 2028. Market research firms project the market will grow from around $7.8 billion in 2025 to over $50 billion by 2030.

Google, Amazon, and Salesforce have all rolled out their own agentic platforms for corporate use — Google with its Gemini Enterprise platform, Amazon with new Bedrock AgentCore tools for managing AI agents, and Salesforce with Agentforce 360 for customer-facing agents.

Microsoft is making a series of announcements related to agents at Ignite, its conference for partners, developers, and customers, taking place this week in San Francisco. Other highlights:

• A “fully autonomous” Sales Development Agent will research, qualify, and engage sales leads on its own, acting basically like a new member of the sales team.
• Security Copilot agents in Microsoft’s security tools will help IT teams automate tasks, like having an agent in Intune create a new security policy from a text prompt.
• Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents will allow users to ask Copilot, via chat, to create a complete, high-quality document or presentation from scratch. 
• Windows is getting a new “Agent Workspace,” a secure, separate environment on the PC where an agent can run complex tasks using its own ID, letting IT monitor its work.

As a backbone for the announcements, Agent 365 leverages Microsoft’s entrenched position in corporate identity and security systems. Instead of asking companies to adopt an entirely new platform, it’s building AI agents into tools that many businesses already use. 

For example, in the Microsoft system, each agent gets its own identity inside Microsoft Entra, formerly Active Directory, the same system that handles employee logins and permissions.

Microsoft is rolling out Agent 365 starting this week in preview through Frontier, its early-access program for its newest AI innovations. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Google Calendar now lets you block time for Google Tasks with busy status, auto-decline, and DND settings, making deep work easier and more intentional.

The post New Google Calendar Update Makes Deep Work Easier Than Ever appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google’s latest release raises the platform’s research capabilities with structured analysis, clear sourcing, and support for more document types.

The post Google’s NotebookLM Update Adds Deep Research, Expanded File Formats appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google’s latest release raises the platform’s research capabilities with structured analysis, clear sourcing, and support for more document types.

The post Google’s NotebookLM Update Adds Deep Research, Expanded File Formats appeared first on TechRepublic.