Launching the expanded AI Classroom Toolkit with Cyberlite during Global Media and Information Literacy Week
AI is opening new pathways to information, giving people faster access to answers, ideas, and knowledge. At the same time, it’s making it harder to know whether the content we see is authentic.
Companies that build AI have a responsibility to make it reliable and trustworthy, and that responsibility doesn’t shift to the people who use it. But AI is already shaping how people search, learn, and encounter information. Helping people navigate that reality means building media and AI literacy (MAIL): the judgment to decide whether and how to use AI and what information to trust. These skills are as foundational as AI safety, and educators are asking for help teaching them.
That’s why, during Global Media and Information Literacy Week, we’re launching the expanded AI Classroom Toolkit: Unlocking Generative AI Safely and Responsibly, created with the online safety organization Cyberlite. It’s part of Microsoft’s broader commitment to make sure AI strengthens human thinking rather than replaces it. It also reflects Microsoft’s focus on education and empowerment, a core pillar of our Safe Participation Framework.
What’s new in the AI Classroom Toolkit
The expanded toolkit adds a deeper focus on critical thinking, verification, and media and AI literacy, helping students judge AI outputs and make informed decisions about what to trust online. Together with the original modules, it’s now a single, classroom-ready resource that covers the core of AI safety and literacy. Realistic, scenario-based lessons and activities help students practice these skills in situations they may encounter online:
The Climate Campaign: Gina enters an online challenge to make a campaign for a cause she cares about and finds that some winning entries use AI to show events that never happened. Students sort a feed of real and AI-made posts and practice lateral reading. The lesson: whether a post was made with AI doesn’t decide whether it’s trustworthy. What it claims, and who is behind it, does.
The Helpful Bot: Alex creates an AI help bot inside his online game, then catches it inventing details and collecting players’ personal information. Students learn why AI can get things wrong, how to trace claims to reliable sources, and why they’re responsible for AI-generated content they act on or share.
What Kind of AI User Are You?: An interactive quiz, hosted by Cyberlite, helps students identify their AI habits, strengths, and potential blind spots, and gives them an AI Type to reflect on and discuss.
“When we created the first Classroom Toolkit: Unlocking Generative AI Safely and Responsibly with Microsoft in 2023, most of the conversation was about using AI safely. Today, the questions young people ask about AI have grown sharper and more personal, like what to believe online or how far to trust a chatbot’s answer,” said Michelle Yao, cofounder of Cyberlite.
The toolkit also reflects what young people in our co-design sessions with Cyberlite told us: they want to learn by doing, through games, real-life scenarios, and peer discussion. Teachers don’t need to be AI experts, and students don’t need an AI tool in hand to start.
That approach builds on the reach and results of the original toolkit. Since 2023, the first version has reached educators in 10 countries and 11 languages, including through government and partner learning platforms. In South Korea, 93% of participating educators reported improved knowledge and understanding of ethical issues, privacy, and bias related to AI.
“Our hope is that every student leaves a little surer of their own judgment, and that everyone feels more confident deciding how AI fits into their lives,” said Yao.
Literacy works alongside product design and policy
Education is one part of the equation. Our commitment to media and AI literacy also shows up in how we design products and the policies we support.
Last month, we set out five principles for AI in education, including “AI designed to support students’ learning, not replace their thinking.” We alsocommitted to enforceable privacy, safety, and transparency protections for qualifying educational AI products in US school districts. These protections help schools and families understand how these tools work and the controls available to them.
Media and AI literacy is now a global priority
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has released a framework for a MAIL assessment beginning in 2029. As part of its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), it will examine how students reflect on, analyze, and evaluate information, including AI-generated information. This week in New Delhi, UNESCO is also launching an AI extension of its “Think Critically, Click Wisely” global curriculum, which Microsoft advised on.
This growing global focus makes the need for support urgent—educators want help, and many aren’t getting it. In Microsoft’s 2026 AI in Education report, 53% of educators and 77% of students say they haven’t had AI training.
Closing this skills gap matters beyond the classroom. Healthy societies depend on a shared basis of facts, informed public debate, and confident civic participation. As authenticity gets harder to judge, there’s a risk that people start doubting everything, creating what the Digital Inquiry Group calls a “dangerous declaration of permanent uncertainty.” MAIL offers a way through. It builds the confidence to decide what to trust.
Media and AI literacy for every age
Across Microsoft, we’re helping people build these skills wherever they learn and find information:
In classrooms: Students debate whether to accept, question, or rework an AI tool’s answers in an AI and Critical Thinking lesson from The Economist Educational Foundation, supported by Microsoft. Available alongside other media literacy lessons in Microsoft Learning Zone, the lesson has reached students in 116 countries.
Through play: Millions of players have checked sources, spotted bias, and cracked cases of AI misuse in Minecraft Education’s The Investigators and Reed Smart: AI Detective.
For content creators: UNESCO, with Microsoft’s support, is developing resources to help creator associations train their members in MAIL and is testing them with creators in Nairobi this week.
For voters: Check. Recheck. Vote. helps people apply AI literacy to election information.
In our products: Search Progress, built with input from the Digital Inquiry Group, turns research assignments into source-checking practice in Microsoft Teams for Education.
What’s next
Through Microsoft Elevate for Educators and local partners, we’ll bring the AI Classroom Toolkit to new audiences, with more languages and localized content rolling out through 2027. We’ll keep evolving it as technology and educators’ needs change.
AI will keep changing how people find information and the content they encounter. Our goal is to help people meet that change with confident, informed judgment about the AI they use and the information they trust so they can fully take part in civic and democratic life.
The rapid diffusion of AI globally and the pace at which AI is developing put us at a societal crossroads. The choices we’re making now will determine who has access to AI and the opportunity it affords. There is perhaps no more important tool than our education systems for addressing the uneven diffusion of AI we’re seeing currently: national adoption runs above 70% in countries such as the United Arab Emirates and falls to low single digits across much of sub-Saharan Africa, close to a tenfold difference.
The way we teach AI and learn with it will have long-lasting impacts on jobs, the workforce, and our broader economy. Learning Curves: Rethinking Education from Classrooms to Careers in an AI-Driven World is a collection of research-driven essays that can help guide those choices. This book brings together the body of work from the second cohort of Senior Fellows from the Microsoft AI Economy Institute (AIEI), a flagship think tank that produces research and convenes experts to generate insights into how AI is reshaping work, education, and the broader economy.
In Learning Curves, researchers consider how AI is reshaping the earliest stages of learning and work, from K–12 classrooms and community and technical colleges to college‑to‑work transitions and entry‑level jobs, and what it will take for that transformation to widen opportunity rather than deepen divides across institutions, communities, and countries.
Below, I share a few of my own reflections that informed my contributions to Learning Curves, a collaborative effort that wouldn’t have been possible without the truly talented, diverse cohort of researchers who contributed to this book.
The good, the bad, and the ugly: Laying the foundation for AI in K–12 classrooms
Before delving into the specifics of how to incorporate AI in classrooms, we need to ask ourselves whether we’re teaching for knowledge, or for learning.
The book, the calculator, the personal computer, the internet, the search engine, and the smartphone all arrived in classrooms carrying real promise alongside the worry that they would hollow out young minds. Usually the truth landed somewhere in between, and where it landed depended less on the tool than on the choices the adults made about how to use it.
The fact is that the AI-native generation is already here, and its members are in classrooms around the world. More than half of US teenagers already use AI chatbots for schoolwork. I’ve personally seen the promise of AI as a force for good in education up close in my own classroom, where I teach a computer science class to elementary school students.
But of course, the good is only part of the story. We can’t shy away from the downsides of incorporating AI into classrooms. While AI can help with accessibility and individualized learning, it can also create over–reliance, contribute to student cheating, or prevent students from recognizing when information may be false.
The rapid deployment of AI in K–12 classrooms needs to come with a sober assessment of how that technology impacts all students. This assessment must go beyond the technology itself to encompass how students, teachers, parents, and society use AI.
AI literacy is only part of the solution
If classrooms are where students learn how to think, teachers are the conduit through which this learning happens. In Learning Curves, Joseph Orero, Senior Researcher in AI at Strathmore University’s School of Computing and Engineering Science, posits that teachers aren’t resistant to AI in classrooms; they just need proper training to help them adequately adapt and teach their students critical skills. His research contribution explores game-based learning with AI-enabled African languages.
AI usage and adoption worldwide are also dependent on accessibility. Another chapter of the book looks at barriers and opportunities in Arabic education and finds that the primary barrier teachers encountered when introducing AI writing assistants into classrooms was Arabic digital literacy, particularly students’ typing ability.
Researchers often circled around a similar theme: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to developing AI competency; instead, such an approach must be sensitive to local knowledge and contextualized teaching and learning practices. This means that teachers, in turn, must have training that makes sense for the unique contexts in which their students are learning.
Frank Nagle, now Microsoft’s Chief AI Economist, Sarah Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, and other researchers in Learning Curves make the case that, in many ways, nontraditional pathways such as apprenticeships and two-year-degree programs, particularly those that are virtual, are more nimble and thus better able to adapt their curricula to the rapidly changing field of AI.
AI Is taught in the classroom, but then what?
Education has never been about simply preparing people for the future of work so they can thrive in the labor market. When considered holistically, it is about teaching students not what to think but how to think. In our AI era, education is one of the core institutions through which the future of work will be built, distributed, and made more (or less) equitable. Successful AI integration remains human-centered by focusing on organizational change, durable human skills like empathy and judgment, strong employer partnerships, and learner needs.
As research from Laura Nuriski, Head of Program on the Future of Work at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), highlights, access to AI alone does not ensure successful integration. Technology transfer, data infrastructure, organizational readiness, and a human-centered approach to building and deploying AI are also key indicators of success.
Whether we’re talking about the classroom or the boardroom, it’s worth keeping in mind that AI tends to do the most good when it strengthens human capability and the most harm when it substitutes for it. That holds as true in a fourth-grade reading lesson as in a software team or a hospital ward.
The children in our schools deserve tools that serve their learning rather than stand in for it, and that is within our power to provide. Our most successful future with AI will be one that is human-centered, inclusive, and designed to help people thrive.
The people and institutions closest to a community understand their needs best. Libraries, small businesses, nonprofits, and schools see firsthand where AI can create opportunity and where people need support to navigate change. At Microsoft, our role is to help these trusted institutions lead by providing practical resources, training, and clear safeguards that strengthen local capacity and put communities at the center of AI literacy and adoption.
Public libraries have served as trusted centers of community learning across the United States for generations. Today, we are announcing a new initiative with the Public Library Association, a division of the American Library Association, to expand resources and no-cost AI literacy and skills training for public library workers and their patrons.
This work delivers on the commitment we made earlier this year through our Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative: to expand access to AI learning and opportunity by investing directly in local training. We’re committed to neighborhood learning through libraries, free literacy training, and certification opportunities, age-appropriate learning in schools and colleges, and support for nonprofit and small-business workforces. This new library initiative is the latest example of our broader work to help trusted local institutions serve as entry points for AI learning, skills development, and opportunity. This program comes alongside small business accelerator programs in TechSpark, our new Elevate for Changemakers platform connecting nonprofits to resources, and our ongoing national and statewide work to bring safe and responsible AI to education.
Local libraries lead AI learning in their communities
The Public Library Association AI literacy initiative we are announcing today, Building AI Skills and Agency Through Libraries, is designed to build practical skills, critical awareness, and the judgment to use AI safely and appropriately. It will pair Microsoft’s AI skilling resources with PLA’s national network of expert practitioners to support library workers and community patrons as they navigate this rapidly evolving technology.
The initiative will expand practical resources and training for library workers, create opportunities to learn from one another through a Community of Practice, and offer free webinars and guidance to support their work with patrons.
Library workers help people navigate information, find learning resources, and make informed decisions for themselves and their families. Supporting those workers is a practical way to bring AI learning closer to people, while respecting the independence of the institutions they trust.
The approach reflects a broader view of AI literacy: people need more than instructions for using AI tools; they also need the knowledge and judgment to decide whether, when and how those tools should be used. The training will help library workers and patrons understand how AI works and expand their skills, while also evaluating potential risks, protecting personal and confidential information, critically evaluating AI-generated claims and sources, and better understanding considerations related to safety and bias.
Equipping trusted local institutions to lead responsible AI adoption
Last July, we launched Microsoft Elevate, a company-wide initiative that brings together our work to help people and institutions build the skills and capacity to navigate AI responsibly. Under the Elevate charter, each year, Microsoft supports nearly one million nonprofit organizations and education systems worldwide with technology, training, grants and discounts. Microsoft Elevate for Educators, our global community of over 100,000 teachers and school leaders, recently recognized our inaugural group of 20 Beacon Schools and School Systems that are leading examples of AI transformation in education, bringing together effective AI practices while keeping educators and students first. They are powerful examples of what happens when you combine committed educators, AI-powered technology, and intentional, no-cost staff training.
In Washington, our Elevate commitment has included a $3 million, two-year investment supporting 10 school districts and 10 community and technical colleges with grants, coaching, and communities of practice. To date, the initiative has reached 29,375 educators, with early pilots in Kennewick and Everett helping teachers explore practical uses of AI while keeping professional judgment at the center.
Skills and access must be matched by strong safeguards. In September, Microsoft joined the American Federation of Teachers to establish a national AI Safety & Privacy Standard for Schools, with enforceable protections for student and educator data, human oversight, and transparency for families. Beginning November 1, every US school district can request Microsoft to add these protections to a new or existing agreement, without waiting for renewal or renegotiation.
That same commitment extends to nonprofit staff and leaders. The Elevate for Changemakers program has already supported over 18,000 learners, helping them build practical AI skills, connect with peers, and earn recognition for turning learning into tangible outcomes for their organizations. And today we are expanding the program and introducing a new, connected experience that brings training, resources, and community together.
Together, these efforts reflect a simple principle: responsible adoption requires more than technology. Educators, nonprofit changemakers, and community leaders need time, training, trusted connections, practical support, and clear guardrails so they can decide when AI strengthens learning and, equally important, when it does not.
Investing in locally led economic opportunity across all 50 states
For nearly a decade, Microsoft has partnered with local nonprofits and small businesses across the U.S. through our TechSpark program.
Through Fellows grants, TechSpark pairs local expertise with Microsoft coaching and a national peer network to help nonprofits expand their impact in their local community and drive accelerated innovation for local small businesses. Today, Microsoft is announcing the new 2027 TechSpark Fellows across all 50 states and releasing the 2026 Fellows Impact Report showing what a locally led model can make possible.
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Over the last three years, the Fellows cumulatively report access to more than $298 million in community funding, 59,600 people trained and upskilled in AI literacy, and more than 1,500 nonprofit partners mobilized to advance their missions within their communities. These numbers tell an important story: no single organization can create lasting opportunity on its own, and local context matters.
In Virginia, Rosie Riveters Executive Director Brittany Greer is showing what it looks like to build the human capabilities that innovation requires. Through hands-on STEM experiences, students build, test, and troubleshoot to develop the critical thinking, persistence, and independent judgment they will need to use AI thoughtfully. Her work is the kind of learning these partnerships are designed to strengthen.
Community institutions know their neighbors, understand the barriers they face, and are best positioned to decide how new resources can serve them.
An ongoing journey
The thread connecting a library worker, a job seeker, a TechSpark Fellow, and a teacher is not a particular product. It is the ability to make informed decisions with support from people and institutions they trust. Our responsibility is to make that support more useful, accessible, and human-centered, while being candid about what we have yet to learn.
As we navigate the rapid pace of innovation in this AI era, our aim is not simply to bring AI into more places. It is to help people retain a stronger voice in what happens next, in their workplaces, their classrooms, and their communities.
Most people have opened their messages to find a suspicious alert urgently telling them that a package cannot be delivered, a toll remains unpaid, a bank account needs attention, or a tax bill is overdue. The details may change, but the goal is the same: to get someone to click, share personal information, or pay.
These messages are relentless. Delete and block one, and another takes its place. Ignore them, and more will follow. Fall for one, and the floodgates open. What appears to be a simple scam message is often the visible end of a much larger transnational cybercriminal operation.
When Microsoft and Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) followed a wave of fraud and scam activity targeting people and businesses in Japan, they expected to find individual campaigns. Instead, they found themselves inside a sprawling Chinese-language cybercrime marketplace where criminals could buy accounts, hosting services and tools used to create fake websites and online identities. The investigation expanded globally, involving the Japan Cybercrime Control Center (JC3), Resecurity, Cloudflare, Oracle, Proofpoint and TRM Labs to uncover the businesses sustaining this criminal ecosystem.
Today, Microsoft and Health-ISAC, a global non-profit that helps health sector organizations share cyber threat information and collaborate to improve operational resilience, are moving to dismantle three components of this criminal marketplace: YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man.
Since January 2026, YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man have collectively enabled more than one billion malicious messages targeting over 75,000 organizations worldwide, including more than 750 million messages geared toward Microsoft customers alone. These messages have been used to target consumers, healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and other businesses in more than 150 countries, generating tens of millions of dollars for their operators.
Tracing the businesses behind the scams
The investigation began in late 2025 after Japan’s NPA alerted Microsoft to malicious messaging campaigns targeting people in Japan. NPA continued providing intelligence and investigative support as the partners traced those campaigns back to the businesses supplying criminals around the world.
The trail led investigators deep into a Chinese-language cybercrime ecosystem that was difficult for non-native-speaking investigators to penetrate. There, they gained access to CoGUI, which supplied criminals with ready-made websites and messages impersonating companies, financial institutions, government agencies, and other trusted organizations. Instead of creating fraudulent websites themselves, criminals could quickly deploy pages designed to steal passwords, payment information, and other personal data.
A fraudulent Amazon lookalike from CoGUI designed to steal login and payment information from Japanese-speaking users
As Microsoft’s investigation expanded, intelligence from JC3 helped confirm the scale of the activity affecting Japanese organizations and their customers. Drawing on information collected across its network of more than 130 member organizations, JC3 connected what appeared to be separate incidents to a broader pattern of scams targeting Japanese companies and financial institutions, including efforts to defraud consumers and to steal credentials and other sensitive information.
One name that kept appearing throughout the investigation was YAM Store. YAM Store operated much like an online shop. Customers could browse products, compare prices and purchase fraudulent Microsoft and Google accounts and other ready-made tools used to carry out scams, including credential theft. Controlled purchases conducted by Microsoft helped confirm how it worked.
In some cases, operators acquired internet domains that legitimate organizations had allowed to expire, often targeting certain sectors, such as non-profits and education, with specialized product offerings. They then rebuilt the websites to make those organizations appear active, allowing them to fraudulently obtain Microsoft 365 accounts that could later be sold through YAM Store.
A rebuilt nonprofit website used to create fraudulent Microsoft 365 accounts that could later be sold through YAM Store
Ready-made tools
YAM Store provided criminal infrastructure that was frequently paired with tools and services such as CoGUI. As investigators dug deeper, they found that the marketplace was already evolving. CoGUI had become one of the most widely used offerings in the ecosystem, particularly targeting victims in Japan and the United States but by mid-2026 it was increasingly being replaced by a newer offering known as Iron Man.
Iron Man expanded the model by giving criminals access to thousands of ready-made templates designed to impersonate trusted organizations. Criminals could then quickly deploy email, text and web content tailored to specific brands, industries and countries.
Through test purchases and work with Resecurity, investigators gained access to Iron Man and identified more than 2,300 templates impersonating banks, retailers, healthcare providers, transportation authorities, police departments, government agencies, and other organizationsacrossmore than150countries worldwide.Some were designed for government impersonation scams, using the appearance of official authority to pressure victims into making payments or disclosing sensitive personal information.Others impersonated organizations across industries, countries, and languages, from banks and airlines to telecommunications companies, retailers, and parcel delivery services.
Examples of these impersonation templates are below. Importantly, the presence of an organization or government entity in these templates does not indicate that its systems were compromised.
Examples of Iron Man templates impersonating brands and government organizations around the world Examples of Iron Man SMS templates impersonating traffic authorities in the Philippines and Australia Post, a package delivery service
A blog from Microsoft Threat Intelligence shares more details on the network, as well as steps customers can take to protect themselves.
Putting the pieces together
No single organization saw the full picture. Japan’s NPA played a critical role throughout the investigation, providing intelligence, investigative support and collaboration that helped uncover how the operation worked. JC3 helped establish the scale of the activity affecting Japanese organizations and consumers. Health-ISAC provided insight into impacts affecting healthcare organizations, while Resecurity, Cloudflare, Oracle, Proofpoint and TRM Labs contributed intelligence and investigative support.
Working together, andwith the assistanceofAItools,we connected accounts, websites, and infrastructure that initially appeared unrelated, helping expose the broader criminal marketplace behind them. Microsoft also worked closely and shared intelligence with U.S. Secret Service and international law enforcement partners.
This investigation also reflects a broader trend highlighted in this year’s Microsoft Digital Defense Report: modern fraud increasingly relies on businesses and services that make it easier for criminals to reach more victims. It took two-way information sharing across industries and international borders to uncover how these deeply interconnected services worked together.
Going after the suppliers
With an order from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Microsoft and Health-ISAC seized and redirected domains that were part of the underlying infrastructure powering YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man. Microsoft has already disabled more than 20,000 accounts connected to YAM Store and continues to dismantle the operation by removing infrastructure hosted on its services and blocking more than 100,000 domains used for impersonation and fraud.
What began with scam activity targeting people and organizations in Japan led investigators to an underground service economy supplying criminals around the world. YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man are only part of that larger criminal network, but disrupting them makes it harder for criminals to obtain the accounts, tools and infrastructure they rely on.
The scam message is often the only part victims see. The businesses behind it are what make it possible.
We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce. That is why the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans.
We look forward to providing the Administration with additional information. For example, of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees. These were not to hire new people. The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country.
Microsoft only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category. We pay our employees some of the highest compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the highest of all H-1B filings. We pay our H-1B employees the same as any other employees doing comparable work.
Microsoft succeeds as a global technology leader by developing the world’s best technology workforce. We do this by strengthening this country’s talent pipeline, hiring American workers, and attracting the best talent from around the world.
According to this year’s Microsoft Digital Defense Report, government agencies and services were the sector most impacted by cyber threats in 2026, accounting for 27% of observed activity, up from 17% in 2025. Governments are also the most frequently targeted sectors for nation-state activity. They are attractive targets because they hold sensitive information, operate essential services, and sit at the center of networks of agencies, contractors, technology providers, and critical infrastructure operators.
Dwell time, the period between when an attacker gains access and when defenders detect and stop them, also increased this year across multiple sectors. While organizations responded faster once an intrusion was identified, detecting threats early remains a challenge. Attackers increasingly gain access through techniques that mimic legitimate activity, making malicious behavior harder to spot. For example, phishing accounted for 23% of observed intrusions in 2026, up from 7% in 2025, highlighting the continued importance of compromised identities as an entry point for broader attacks.
Taken together, the implication for governments is clear. Security in the AI era is no longer simply about preventing individual intrusions. It is about ensuring institutions can operate effectively in an environment where risks are interconnected, threats move faster, and attackers remain hidden longer. Public-private partnerships are also more important than ever for securing critical government infrastructure and developing the policies and regulations needed for emerging technologies.
In this year’s report, which examines cyber threat trends observed between July 2025 and June 2026, Terrell Cox, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President & Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, and I explore how these dynamics are reshaping cyber risk. In a companion blog, Terrell takes a closer look at what these findings mean for CISOs and security professionals.
To strengthen resilience, governments should focus on five priorities:
1. Prepare for a faster threat environment
AI is compressing the window for action. Adversaries are moving faster. A vulnerability’s discovery in the wild to active weaponization can be well below 24 hours. While the number of publicly disclosed software vulnerabilities (commonly tracked as CVEs) is projected to reach a record 72,000 in 2026.
Governments best prepared for the future will be those that can rapidly gather and assess information, make decisions, coordinate across institutions and industries, and communicate effectively during a crisis. This requires clearly defined responsibilities and trusted relationships established before an incident occurs, enabling swift and coordinated action when it matters most.
2. Build security into the AI ecosystem
AI is becoming part of the infrastructure that governments, businesses, and citizens rely on every day. As governments continue to adopt AI across public services and encourage its broader use, they should approach its security as a resilience challenge rather than a narrow technical issue.
AI systems depend on interconnected infrastructure, data, models, applications, suppliers, and governance processes. Governments should promote security across this ecosystem through secure-by-design practices, testing and evaluation, stronger supply chain protections, transparency, accountability, and international cooperation on AI risk.
The goal is not to create a separate AI security agenda. It is to integrate AI security into broader efforts to protect critical infrastructure and build national resilience.
3. Plan for incidents to spread
Governments may not immediately know whether an intrusion is criminal, geopolitical, or something else. Cybercriminals and nation-state actors pursue different objectives, but increasingly rely on many of the same entry points, including compromised identities, exposed applications, social engineering, and legitimate administrative tools.
Microsoft found that 52.2% of intrusions involving valid accounts resulted in additional credential theft, highlighting how quickly attackers can expand beyond an initial foothold. A seemingly isolated compromise can evolve into ransomware, espionage, data theft, or disruption of essential services.
Governments should therefore assess incidents not only by how they begin, but by where they could lead. Response plans should account for the suppliers, partners, and service providers supporting critical functions. As attacks expand beyond their initial targets, they can also cross organizational, sectoral, and national boundaries, reinforcing the need for global collaboration.
4. Enable timely, two-way public-private information sharing
A compromised account at one organization may provide early warning of a broader campaign. Signals that appear inconclusive in isolation can reveal coordinated activity when combined across organizations and jurisdictions. Modern cybercrime operates through interconnected networks of actors, services, and infrastructure that no single institution can fully see or disrupt on its own.
Information sharing must be timely, trusted, and two-way—also known as bidirectional. The goal is not simply for companies to report threats to government. Public agencies should also return actionable intelligence, guidance, and warnings that help organizations protect their networks, customers, and operations. Trusted channels can enable this exchange among government agencies, law enforcement, critical infrastructure operators, technology providers, and international partners while respecting legal and privacy requirements.
Policymakers can support this cooperation through protections for good-faith information sharing, common anonymization standards, and investment in shared threat intelligenceand detection capabilities. Information sharing should also lead to action, including investigations, disruption efforts, and accountability for those responsible for serious cyber intrusions.
5. Prepare essential services to operate through disruption
The organizations governments depend on to deliver public services, including transportation systems, communications infrastructure, schools, universities, and critical infrastructure operators, are increasingly targeted by cyber threats. Resilience therefore requires understanding not only government systems, but the broader ecosystem that supports them.
Planning documents alone are not enough. Governments should regularly conduct tabletop exercises bringing together policymakers, operational leaders, law enforcement, critical infrastructure operators, and private-sector partners to test how they would respond to incidents disrupting essential services. These exercises can expose gaps in decision-making, information sharing, public communications, and cross-sector coordination before a real-world crisis. Microsoft’s work through initiatives such as the Advancing Regional Cybersecurity (ARC) program, most recently in Kenya, illustrates how scenario-based exercises and cross-sector collaboration can help strengthen preparedness and response capabilities across the broader ecosystem.
Government leaders should also know which services are most critical, which identities, systems, suppliers, and infrastructure support them, and how incidents will be escalated. Shared-service approaches can help extend security and response capabilities to local governments and public institutions that cannot build them independently.
As cyber incidents cross organizational and national boundaries, resilience depends not only on technical preparedness, but on whether institutions can coordinate effectively under pressure.
In an era of AI-enabled and increasingly interconnected cyber threats, resilience is no longer simply about recovering from an attack. It is about preparing for a world in which cyber incidents move faster, spread further, and affect more organizations than ever before. Governments best prepared for the future will be those that can contain harm, adapt quickly, and continue delivering critical services when citizens need them the most.
Today we published our latest Global AI Diffusion Report. Global AI diffusion continued to climb in the second quarter of 2026. In June, AI usage was 18.8% of the working-age population worldwide, an increase of about 1% from the first quarter of this year. Growth was broad-based: almost every economy saw increased usage.
Notably, the UAE (73.3%) and Singapore (64.3%) continue to top the leaderboard. South Korea again saw the largest absolute change, with an increase of 3.5 percentage points. Saudi Arabia climbed five places from 30th to 25th, the largest rise in the rankings. Japan recorded the largest relative change, growing by 2.2 percentage points, or roughly 10% relative to its Q1 usage of 22.5%. Worldwide, the quarter brought a continued widening of the AI gap between the Global North and South, with usage now at 28.8% in the North and 16.2% in the South.
To track all these trends, we continue to measure AI diffusion as the share of people worldwide ages of 15 and 64 who have used a generative AI product during the reported period. This measure is derived from aggregated and anonymized Microsoft telemetry data and is adjusted to reflect differences in operating system and device market share, internet penetration, and population. Additional details on the methodology are available in our AI Diffusion technical paper.
No single metric is perfect, and this one is no exception. Through the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, we continue to refine how we measure AI diffusion globally, including how adoption varies across countries in ways that best advance priorities such as scientific discovery and productivity gains. For this report, we rely on the strongest cross-country measure available today. Over the past year, there has been a significant rise in new AI tools and models. For our next report, we will expand our measure to include usage of these new tools and expect this update to increase AI user share across almost all economies, with larger projected increases in China.
In addition to our comparison of AI diffusion between the Global North and the Global South, we also find important differences in how AI is being used. Using consumer Microsoft Copilot usage insights, we examined these differences. The most notable difference is a higher share of education and learning use in the Global South.
This report also includes a substantive discussion of open-weight AI models. Open-weight AI model use is increasingly visible through application programming interface (API) usage of AI, where open models have captured a growing share of token volume. This shift could especially benefit the Global South by lowering access costs and enabling adaptation to local languages and needs, although barriers such as infrastructure, connectivity, and skills remain.
Why LinkedIn is challenging an overbroad government demand—and why Congress must make secrecy the exception
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit heard oral argument in LinkedIn’s (a Microsoft subsidiary) appeal challenging a government demand for user records and a related secrecy order that is preventing LinkedIn from notifying those users that the government is seeking their data. The appeal asks important, constitutional questions about whether service providers may challenge demands that sweep in records unrelated to an investigation, and when the government may prevent a provider from notifying the user of a request.
This appeal continues Microsoft’s longstanding work to ensure that secrecy orders remain the exception, not the rule. LinkedIn’s appeal asks courts to enforce meaningful limits on both the scope of government demands and the secrecy that can accompany them.
We recognize law enforcement’s important role in protecting public safety and investigating crime, and sometimes that does need to be done covertly. We respond to lawful legal requests. At the same time, customers and users deserve meaningful limits and independent oversight through an adversarial process. And, customers deserve to be notified when the government seeks their data, unless the government clearly establishes the need for secrecy under statutory and constitutional standards.
Those safeguards fulfill basic constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment protects the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. That right applies to papers kept in a desk, and it also applies when personal and business records are stored online. Online service providers, like LinkedIn and Microsoft, also have a First Amendment right to speak to their customers when the government obtains an order to search their private information. Secrecy may sometimes be justified—but it should be tailored to demonstrated needs and subject to meaningful review.
This particular case arose after LinkedIn received a court order seeking user records together with a secrecy order preventing LinkedIn from informing anyone about the order. The details remain under seal, including the nature of the information the government seeks and the people who own that information. But the Fourth Circuit partially unsealed LinkedIn’s opening brief in July, allowing the public to understand some ofthe core issues. LinkedIn argues that the demand is overbroad, the secrecy order is unconstitutional, and the government has violated LinkedIn’s due process by withholding evidence from LinkedIn.
Three amicus briefs from a broad coalition support LinkedIn’s position. The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Virginia argue that users’ privacy interests must inform whether a demand is reasonable and that providers may be the only practical means of challenging unlawful process because users often receive no notice. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press warns that overbroad demands, delayed notice, and secret evidence can expose confidential sources and chill newsgathering. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and X emphasize that cloud providers are uniquely positioned to identify irrelevant requests and that secrecy orders require case-specific evidence rather than boilerplate assertions. Together, these briefs show why cloud providers must be able to test both the scope of government demands and the need for secrecy.
Microsoft has a long record of standing up for these principles. In 2014, Microsoft successfully challenged a secrecy order connected to a National Security Letter that prevented notice to an enterprise customer. In 2016, we filed a landmark challenge to the widespread use of indefinite secrecy orders. We’ve successfully challenged individual secrecy orders time and again over the years. Our efforts contributed to updated Justice Department policies, but executive-branch practices can change. Durable protections require the development of case law and legislation.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently took an important step in that direction. On August 31, the House passed legislation to rein in secret surveillance and strengthen notice protections when the government seeks data held by technology providers. As we explained when the bill passed, the reforms would place clearer limits on secrecy orders, require greater accountability, and help ensure that secrecy is the exception – not the rule. The Senate should act promptly to send these historic reforms to the President.
The House–passed legislation recognizes that privacy and public safety are not opposing values. Clear standards can give investigators the confidentiality they genuinely need while providing courts, providers, and customers with predictable rules. The pending legislation and LinkedIn’s appeal are the latest, complementary chapters in this broader effort. Legislation can establish durable, system-wide rules for notice and accountability. Courts must meanwhile enforce the limits already contained in existing statutes and the Constitution. Neither task requires obstructing legitimate investigations. Rather, both mean the government must seek only relevant information, justify secrecy with specific evidence, and infringe on speech to the least extent possible.
That is why today’sargument matters beyond a single sealed investigation. People and organizations increasingly entrust their most sensitive information to online services. If providers cannot challenge demands they know are overbroad—or if courts may silence them without a rigorous, adversarial review—the safeguards the law requires will be weakened precisely when they are most needed.
Microsoft and LinkedIn will continue to support lawful investigations while standing up for customer privacy, transparency, and the rule of law. We have appealed to the Fourth Circuit to preserve providers’ ability to challenge overbroad demands and to require the government to meet its constitutional burden before imposing secrecy. And we urge the Senate to complete the work the House began by enacting durable non-disclosure order reform.
In armed conflict, a simple symbol can save lives. The Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Crystal emblems signal that those providing medical care and humanitarian assistance must be protected.
In cyberspace, there is not yet a widely adopted equivalent, even as hospitals, humanitarian organizations, and relief operations increasingly rely on digital systems to deliver care, coordinate assistance, protect sensitive data, and reach people in crisis.
Today, the digital systems that support hospitals and humanitarian operations—including communications tools, logistics platforms, patient care systems, cloud services, and the data center infrastructure which underpins them—can be difficult to distinguish from surrounding digital infrastructure. In conflict, that raises the risk of misidentification, spillover, and cascading disruption from cyber operations. As cybersecurity operations become more automated and machine-driven, clear, trustworthy, machine-readable signals become even more important.
That is why Microsoft supports the International Committee of the Red Cross as it launches the next phase of the Digital Emblem initiative today in Geneva. The Digital Emblem is intended to provide a machine-readable way to help identify digital assets that support protected medical and humanitarian functions, so they can be recognized, verified, and avoided in conflict settings.
From principles to operational practice
The Digital Emblem does not create new legal protections, and it does not replace cybersecurity. Instead, it helps to make existing protections under international humanitarian law more actionable in cyberspace.
For many years, governments, humanitarian actors, civil society, technical experts, and industry have worked to clarify how international law applies in cyberspace. These efforts have reinforced a core principle that civilians, medical services, and humanitarian operations must be respected and protected in armed conflict. But translating that principle into operational reality remains difficult when protected digital assets are not easily identifiable.
The Digital Emblem can help bridge that gap. If implemented responsibly, a clearer, more consistent, and technically usable signal can support recognition, verification, and respect for protected medical and humanitarian functions in cyberspace.
This next phase marks an important transition for the Digital Emblem: from concept development toward operationalization, testing, standards, and implementation.
Over the past several years, the ICRC has worked with states, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, technical experts, standards bodies, academia, and industry to explore whether the protective function of the physical emblems can be translated meaningfully into cyberspace. That work has helped move the Digital Emblem from an important idea to a project with growing legal, technical, and operational foundations.
The work now is to test how the Digital Emblem can be deployed, discovered, authenticated, and verified in real-world conditions. It also means advancing standards work through bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and the International Telecommunication Union, developing guidance for those who operate protected digital infrastructure, and engaging the actors who will need to recognize and respect the Digital Emblem in practice.
Building on Microsoft’s work to protect civilians in cyberspace
Across our cybersecurity work, we have consistently argued that protecting civilians and critical services in cyberspace requires more than statements of principle. It requires practical standards, technical implementation, trusted partnerships, and cooperation among governments, humanitarian actors, civil society, standards bodies, and industry.
From our early calls for stronger norms of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, to the launch of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, Microsoft has advocated for the application of international law and the protection of civilians online.
Every day, Microsoft works alongside governments and partners to detect, disrupt, and defend against cyberattacks that target critical infrastructure, healthcare, and humanitarian operations. Together, we have seen the importance of real-time visibility, trusted signals, and coordinated defense across public and private actors. This work has underscored a central reality: as civilian and humanitarian services become more digitally dependent, cybersecurity is increasingly connected to humanitarian resilience.
Microsoft will continue supporting the ICRC with a focus on how our technologies enable this model at scale. That includes exploring how technology can support both sides: enabling humanitarian and medical organizations to signal protected systems and helping defenders recognize and verify those signals in real-world operations.
The role of industry
The ICRC’s leadership is essential to the credibility and neutrality of this effort. But for the Digital Emblem to succeed, it must also work across the broader technology ecosystem, which includes the cloud services and data centers, telecommunications networks, cybersecurity tools, identity systems, and other digital infrastructure on which humanitarian and medical organizations increasingly rely.
Industry, therefore, has an important role to play in helping ensure the Digital Emblem is technically sound, interoperable, and aligned with how defenders operate in practice. That includes supporting standards development, helping test implementation models, and ensuring that any approach reflects both sides of the model: enabling eligible humanitarian and medical organizations to express the signal for relevant assets and helping defenders recognize and verify that signal in operational workflows.
In today’s fragmented and low-trust geopolitical environment, shared technical standards can reduce ambiguity even where political agreement is difficult. That is why standards-based implementation can help make the Digital Emblem consistent, verifiable, and usable across networks, platforms, and borders.
From launch to implementation
The launch in Geneva marks an important milestone, but the Digital Emblem’s promise will depend on what happens next.
The work ahead should focus on clear and concrete outcomes: continued technical testing, progress in standards development bodies, practical implementation guidance, and broader engagement from states, humanitarian actors, technology companies, telecommunications providers, cybersecurity professionals, and operational defenders.
The call to action is straightforward. Governments should support the Digital Emblem as a mechanism for making protected humanitarian and medical functions more identifiable in cyberspace and promote respect for it in policy and practice. Humanitarian and medical organizations should help test and shape implementation so it reflects operational reality. Standards bodies should continue building the technical foundations for trusted adoption. And technology companies should help translate the Digital Emblem into the tools, systems, and workflows defenders already use.
Physical emblems made humanitarian protection visible on the battlefield. The Digital Emblem can help make protected humanitarian and medical functions visible, verifiable, and actionable in cyberspace. Turning that promise into practice will require sustained cooperation so that those who care for the wounded, the sick, and civilians can be more easily recognized, respected, and protected in the digital age.
Today we’re publishing our first “Public Country-by-Country Report” for our fiscal year 2025, disclosing our taxes in the period from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. It covers the countries and regions included under European Union rules and shows, for each one, our revenue, profit, number of employees, and income tax accrued and paid during the year. We have provided this kind of information directly to tax authorities for several years under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) framework. It is now published to support transparency commitments, and we believe it is important to proactively address any questions these disclosures may raise, recognizing that numbers on a spreadsheet rarely tell the full story. Microsoft pays the taxes we owe in every country where we operate. We know there are strong views about whether companies are paying enough, and we believe providing this contextleads to a more informed conversation.
Understanding country-by-country reporting
Country-by-country reporting is not widely understood outside tax and accounting circles. Some figures may look surprising at first, but a number that appears low or high in one country does not, on its own, tell the full story. Tax law differs from country to country, and there are two important things to keep in mind when reading the report.
First, the numbers are prepared using rules that differ from United States or country-specific financial accounting and tax rules, so they may not match other Microsoft information people have seen. For example, this report combines all Microsoft legal entities in a country and follows the reporting rules required by EU regulations. By contrast, local statutory accounts usually cover just one legal entity, follow local accounting rules, and may use a different fiscal year from Microsoft’s.
Second, accrued tax is what you owe for the year. Tax paid is the amount actually paid during the year. The two can differ because the timing of owing tax and paying tax doesn’t match exactly.
France is a good example of why a single line can look unusual without context. In FY25, cash tax paid in France reflects a one-time refund of tax overpaid in an earlier year. That makes this year an outlier. In this specific case, accrued tax may be a better reflection of the taxes borne for the fiscal year. Microsoft paid $374 million in tax in France over the prior three years.
Variations like these are a normal part of how large companies, both domestic and multinational, are taxed across borders, and they reflect an evolving tax landscape as well as a business that continues to change. We comply with every local rule that applies to us, and as those rules change, our reporting will change with them. Microsoft is committed to a tax structure that reflects where our people work, where we invest, and where functions, assets, and risks occur, and this has been a guiding principle.
How our investments support local economies
We understand that this discussion is not only about what the law requires or what a single tax line shows in a given year. For many people, it is also about a broader question of contribution: how companies support the countries where they do business. That contribution includes the taxes we pay, the capital we invest, the local jobs and infrastructure we support, and the economic activity created through customers and partners. In the S&P, Microsoft ranks second globally in corporate income taxes paid in the last year, with a total of $28.7 billion. In fiscal year 2025, we paid $6.3 billion in income tax in the EU. Importantly, this does not include payroll, VAT, property, and other taxes paid in addition.
Taken together, our tax payments, capital investments, and partner ecosystem reflect a long-term commitment to the countries where we operate. We opened our first European office in the UK in 1982, followed by France and Germany in 1983, and then expanded into Denmark, Ireland (our largest hub in the region), Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden in 1985. Microsoft is now present in all 27 EU Member States and across the broader region. We have worked in these and many other communities for decades, and thousands of our employees call them home.
From research and development to digital infrastructure and partnerships with local organizations, we are investing in ways that support these economies beyond our direct commercial activity. At our core, we are building tools that help large enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, institutions, and individuals become more productive and competitive, which strengthens their business and benefits the people they serve. We only do well when our customers do well. In practice, that means helping customers design and manufacture cars better, helping patients get their next appointment sooner, or making it simpler for someone to find that dream job.
Our investments in digital infrastructure are not only supporting the local digital economy, they are also contributing meaningfully through both taxation and capital expenditure. Across markets, we continue to invest at scale in datacenters and supporting infrastructure, creating value that extends well beyond the technology sector. In the three years to June 30, 2025, our total capital expenditure amounted to $176 billion, and we spent $89.2 billion on research and development in the markets where we operate.
Our customers require local industry- and country-specific expertise, and this is where our partner ecosystem plays an important role. Many of these partners are local businesses themselves. A 2024 IDC study on partner profitability showed that for every $1 of Microsoft revenue, partners that provide services generate $8.45, and partners that develop software generate $10.93. While this varies by country and partner segment, it offers another useful lens on how Microsoft’s business contributes to local economic activity.
Investments in digital infrastructure are not only investments in technology ecosystems, but in national and local economies as well. They support jobs, strengthen supply chains, create opportunities for companies across many sectors, and help build the foundation for growth and economic competitiveness beyond the digital economy.
That is the broader context for this report. Tax is one important measure of contribution, but it is not the only one. Our investments, partnerships, infrastructure, and long-term presence in countries around the world also reflect a commitment to helping strengthen the economies and communities where we operate, today and for the future.
At Microsoft, we are committed to our customers’ fundamental right to privacy. In a world defined by rapid technological change and geopolitical volatility, this commitment has remained constant. It’s rooted in decades of experience building trusted technologies that our customers rely on every day to manage their data. Many of these organizations depend on the ability to move data across the Atlantic, from the EU to the U.S., in a way that protects their privacy. That’s why we support the European Commission in its defense of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. And that’s why we have formally intervened in the Latombe v. Commission case before the Court of Justice of the European Union. This case puts at stake two principles that are important for Microsoft – the protection of our customers’ privacy and their ability to do business on both sides of the Atlantic.
To intervene in a case before the Court of Justice, a company must apply for permission. In this case, the Court granted our application, finding that Microsoft has a direct and existing interest in its result. Put simply, the outcome of this case will determine whether Microsoft and its enterprise customers may continue to use the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework to transfer data to participating U.S. companies, including vital customers and suppliers. This critical legal bridge promotes stability, beneficial trans-Atlantic ties, economic growth, and prosperity, while upholding strong privacy safeguards. The Latombe case seeks to dismantle it. As an intervener, we can now file legal briefs in support of the European Commission, participate in oral hearings, and share our perspective on the importance of upholding a framework that directly benefits the European economy.
Supporting the European Commission’s adequacy decision on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework before the Court of Justice of the European Union
Companies across the globe rely on data flows to manage their people, produce their goods and services, and distribute products to their customers. We understand that data flows trigger questions about differences in legal traditions. They should. And for that reason, the European Commission and the U.S. administration worked diligently, in the decade since the Safe Harbour ruling, to harmonize EU and U.S. law. As a result of that hard work, and as required under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the U.S. has now created an independent review court for any complaints regarding U.S. surveillance and implemented other required measures to provide an “adequate” level of data protection that is essentially equivalent to that in the EU.
This equivalence is a key point. The law entitles our customers to privacy on both sides of the Atlantic. This is the principle on which the Data Privacy Framework rests. And our intervention in the Latombe case is just one part of a long history in which we have stood up for that principle in Europe, as well as in the U.S. As far back as 2014, Microsoft challenged the FBI’s secret attempt to use its national security authorities to obtain information about an account that belonged to one of our enterprise customers. After we filed the case, the FBI withdrew its request. In 2016, we sued the U.S. government to challenge its practice of seeking indefinite secrecy orders—i.e., orders that prevented Microsoft from ever notifying its enterprise customers when the government sought their data. As a result of that case, the U.S. Department of Justice changed its policy to place strict limits on the duration of secrecy orders. In the decade since that first constitutional challenge, we’ve launched a series of successful court challenges to ensure that secrecy orders, of any duration, are the exception, not the rule. As a result of our litigation, numerous secrecy orders have been vacated or modified to allow notification to our customers.
We don’t confine our advocacy to courts. We are a steadfast proponent of strong privacy regulation on both sides of the Atlantic. That’s why we are specifically pushing Congress to update the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act to place stricter limits on the use of secrecy orders and ensuring they are subject to meaningful judicial review. This legislative reform is gaining momentum in Congress and will greatly enhance our continued ability to protect our customers’ data.
Stable and trusted data transfers are not an end in themselves. They are a means to enable innovation, economic opportunity, and public services—while upholding the fundamental rights that are at the core of EU and U.S. law. Our intervention in the Latombe case reflects that principled balance and follows a long line of legal actions we have taken to protect our customers.
Looking ahead
At Microsoft, we have long recognized that trust is not a given—it is earned through sustained action, thoughtful design, and a willingness to engage openly with governments, customers, and individuals. Microsoft has consistently advocated for strong, clear, and globally interoperable privacy frameworks, recognizing that trust in technology depends on the strength of the rules that govern it.
Our customers in Europe can rely on us to continuously improve and update our privacy practices as technology and legal standards evolve. In 2018, we were the first major technology company to extend GDPR subject matter rights to all our customers around the world. And recent positive assessments of our privacy compliance by the European Data Protection Supervisor and the Hessian DPA in Germany underscore our continuous commitment to our customers’ fundamental right to privacy.
In support of this work, we’ve updated the Microsoft Privacy Statement to use clearer structure, simplified language, and more precise explanations of our data practices—making it easier to understand what data we collect and how it’s used, without changing our underlying privacy protections or commitments.
The future of technology will be shaped not only by what we build, but by the principles that guide us. By grounding innovation in respect for people and organizations, and strong legal protections, we can help ensure that technology continues to be a force for good.
More than 30 percent of the US working-age population is using AI, an increase of three percentage points from the end of 2025. But what does that number mean, and what lessons should we take from it? Today Microsoft released a new report that offers an in-depth look at AI adoption across the United States, allowing for the first time a state- and county-level review. This data and the trends it shows are important.
On a national basis, the US leads the world in AI innovation but ranks just 21st in global AI adoption. Part of the reason for this gap is a clear and uneven pattern of AI adoption across the country. We are also seeing a significant divide between urban and rural counties in AI usage. Usage averages 32.9 percent in metropolitan counties, compared with 16.2 percent in rural areas. In other words, metropolitan usage is about double what we see across rural America.
The study also shows that another powerful driver of AI diffusion is the presence of colleges and universities. Counties with higher shares of residents aged 18 to 24 have significantly higher AI usage rates—28.6 percent compared with 20.3 percent in other counties. And while college students are some of the most vocal about the risks of AI, they are also helping lead adoption. In counties with college towns like Williamsburg, Virginia, and Story, Iowa, we see usage rates that rival the highest in the world.
Today we published our latest Global AI Diffusion Report. The global adoption of artificial intelligence continued to rise in the first quarter of 2026. During the quarter, AI usage increased by 1.5 percentage points from 16.3% to 17.8% of the world’s working age population. Intensity of use among economies with the highest rates of AI diffusion also increased, with 26 economies now exceeding 30% of the working age population using AI.
At the top of Microsoft’s National AI Leaderboard, the UAE continued to lead global AI diffusion at 70.1%. The United States finally started to move up the national rankings, albeit only from 24th to 21st based on a 31.3% usage rate by the working age population.
Notable developments in the quarter included accelerating AI adoption in Asia driven in part by improving AI capabilities in Asian languages. South Korea, Thailand, and Japan saw the greatest movement. More broadly, the quarter brought continued widening of the AI gap between the Global North and South, with usage now at 27.5% in the North and 15.4% in the South. These trends are discussed below, including a deeper dive on the positive impact of enhanced multilingual AI capabilities in Japan.
To track all these trends, we continue to measure AI diffusion as the share of people worldwide between ages 15 and 64 who have used a generative AI product during the reported period. This measure is derived from aggregated and anonymized Microsoft telemetry and adjusted to reflect differences in OS and device-market share, internet penetration, and country population. Additional details on the methodology are available in our AI Diffusion technical paper.[1]
No single metric is perfect, and this one is no exception. Through the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, we continue to refine how we measure AI diffusion globally, including how adoption varies across countries in ways that best advance priorities such as scientific discovery and productivity gains. For this report, we rely on the strongest cross-country measure available today, and we expect to complement it over time with additional indicators as they emerge and mature.
Sectorally, the quarter saw strengthened AI coding capabilities leading to a dramatic increase in production of software code. This was reflected in production by Anthropic’s Claude Code, the OpenAI’s Codex, and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot. Git pushes – through which software developers put coding changes online – increased 78% year over year globally. Interestingly, the quarter brought added evidence that, at least for now, AI coding capabilities may be increasing demand for the employment of software developers.
As discussed in more detail in the report, when developer productivity increases, the cost of building software declines. If demand for software is elastic, organizations can respond by building more software across a wider range of use cases. It is still too early to know the full labor-market impact of AI-assisted coding, but the available data shows that in 2025, total U.S. software developer employment reached approximately 2.2 million, rising 8.5% year over year and marking a record high for the profession. Early data for the first quarter of 2026 shows that software developer employment in March 2026 was about 4% higher than in March 2025.
When a major cyber incident hits, the first decisions aren’t technical—they’re human. Who takes the lead? How quickly can information be shared? When should governments step in, and how do you protect public trust while keeping essential services running?
These questions are at the heart of Microsoft’s Advancing Regional Cybersecurity (ARC) initiative, launched in 2025 to help governments strengthen cyber preparedness through practical, public-private collaboration. Today, we’re sharing the first tangible output of that work: the ARC Kenya Exercise Report & Toolkit, developed through a tabletop exercise held in Nairobi in December 2025.
Developed with Kenya’s National Computer and Cybercrime Coordination Committee (NC4) and RiskSight, the toolkit is a practical planning resource designed to help government and cross-sector leaders prepare for cyber crises before they occur. It is grounded in real conversations among leaders from government, regulators, critical infrastructure operators, law enforcement, academia, and the private sector working through what a serious cyber incident would demand of them, together.
Stress‑testing decisions before a crisis hits
The ambition of the “Silicon Savannah” makes Kenya a compelling setting for this work. Its digital economy is expanding rapidly—from mobile‑first financial services to cloud‑enabled public infrastructure—positioning the country as a regional technology leader. But rapid digital growth also brings increased exposure to more sophisticated cyber threats. As systems become more interconnected, a serious cyber incident can quickly disrupt essential services, undermine public trust, and threaten economic stability.
Kenya’s approach recognizes this reality and reflects a critical principle: cybersecurity is not separate from innovation; it is one of the conditions that allows digital transformation to scale safely. The ARC initiative embodies this philosophy and helps decision makers confront the practical realities of coordination, escalation, and response in this complex environment.
This is exactly what the ARC Kenya tabletop exercise was designed to do. The objective was not to test tools but to stress‑test decision making under pressure. Participants were challenged with complex scenarios—including AI‑enabled breaches, ransomware attacks, and infrastructure‑level disruptions. The focus was not on technical fixes but on leadership clarity, cross‑agency coordination, and real‑time decision making in high‑pressure environments.
The outcome was both a roadmap for the unknown and a clear recognition of the need for shared expectations before a crisis begins—particularly around leadership and authority, trusted information sharing channels, and agreed response frameworks. These gaps, identified by participants themselves, now form the backbone of the ARC Kenya Toolkit.
What the ARC Kenya toolkit delivers
The toolkit translates the lessons of the exercise into concrete actions that leaders can take now—before the next incident occurs. It also serves as a practical and specific 12‑month roadmap for strengthening Kenya’s cyber preparedness, moving from lessons identified to durable, institutional capability. Specifically, the toolkit provides recommendations to:
Clarify national leadership during major cyber incidents, enabling government, regulators, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure operators to coordinate more quickly, with fewer gaps and overlaps.
Establish practical, standards‑aligned incident response models for the entire country, including priority playbooks that teams can train on and execute consistently.
Strengthen operational readiness across sectors, with better coordination between security operations centers (SOCs), clearer escalation thresholds, and more reliable incident reporting pathways.
Deepen trusted information sharing and public‑private collaboration through common handling rules, safer “good‑faith” reporting mechanisms, and regular joint exercises to build muscle memory before a crisis.
Taken together, these elements enable leaders not only to respond more effectively to cyber incidents, but to institutionalize preparedness, coordination, and resilience across the national cyber ecosystem. For African countries more broadly, the model also offers a practical pathway to strengthen regional cyber cooperation—by aligning expectations around escalation, information sharing, and public‑private coordination before a cross‑border incident occurs. By translating high‑level principles into practical, repeatable approaches to crisis readiness, the toolkit underscores the value of trusted international partnerships and alignment with global norms for responsible state behavior in cyberspace.
Why Kenya’s approach matters beyond its borders
Many countries across the Global South are grappling with similar challenges: fragmented ownership of critical infrastructure, uneven cyber capacity across sectors, and the need to coordinate rapidly under pressure. While firmly grounded in Kenya’s national context, the lessons from ARC Kenya are therefore intentionally designed to resonate far beyond its borders and to be highly transferable.
Importantly, this work does not end in Kenya. We are already building on these lessons through ARC engagements in other regions, including a new workstream in Mexico, applying the same approach to strengthen preparedness, coordination, and resilience across different national contexts.
By design, the ARC initiative is not simply a record of a single exercise. It is a foundation others can build on—at a national or regional level—offering leaders a practical starting point to turn shared responsibility into sustained capability.
For more than a decade, the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) has persistently disrupted cybercrime and nation-state threats targeting people, organizations, and critical infrastructure. Explore major disruptions—and the ongoing cases and operations behind them here: Disrupting cyberthreats since 2008 | Microsoft
Cybersecurity is at a turning point. Advanced AI models are dramatically accelerating vulnerability discovery and creating conditions ripe for exploitation, underscored by the announcement of Claude Mythos Preview. This marks a shift, and whether this technology will favor defenders or attackers will depend on the choices we make now.
With the right safeguards, these capabilities can help trusted defenders identify and fix vulnerabilities across critical systems in hospitals, power grids, water, and telecommunications. Released irresponsibly or not properly secured, however, those same capabilities could be abused by malicious actors, threatening the foundations of our digital ecosystem.
Much of the discussion has rightly focused on risks. As advanced AI models speed up the discovery of vulnerabilities, the way we fix them must speed up too. That means stronger pre-deployment risk assessments and close collaboration between governments, frontier AI developers, software providers, and the broader ecosystem to ensure these tools reduce, rather than increase, cyber risk. This is particularly important as AI systems themselves have become high‑value targets, requiring stronger protection of models, systems, data, and underlying infrastructure.
This is ultimately an international challenge. Neither software supply chains nor threat actors stop at borders. Neither can our response. Meeting this moment will require shared approaches across countries, sectors, and systems—rooted in trust, shared standards, resilience, and responsible use.
This moment is also an opportunity. Security has been and remains the top priority at Microsoft. Over the last two years, through our Secure Future Initiative, we have strengthened our security foundations for this age of AI, in part by using AI to accelerate vulnerability discovery and remediation. We have also invested in fundamental AI for security research, including the development of open-source industry benchmarks that can be used to evaluate whether models are ready for real-world security work. We are accelerating that work through deeper public-private collaboration and in partnership with AI, including Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber program.
Securing our digital ecosystem with next‑generation AI is within reach but is not automatic.
Building secure foundations for the era of frontier AI
Ensuring advanced AI technologies are used to strengthen cybersecurity requires deliberate and urgent action. We are sharing the following recommendations as practical steps governments, industry, and the broader ecosystem can take to ensure these tools, often referred to as “frontier AI”, reinforce the security foundations on which digital societies depend. And we hope to continue to partner with model providers, industry and government so we can work together to improve security outcomes for all.
1. Reinforce core cybersecurity practices
Advanced AI can strengthen cybersecurity only when strong, consistent cyber hygiene is already in place. As frontier AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and response, core practices such as rapid patching, access control, and system resilience become more critical, not less.
Security gains in the frontier AI era depend on close coordination between technology providers advancing new capabilities and the organizations responsible for operating, updating, and securing real‑world systems. Without this interdependence, advanced AI cannot deliver durable improvements in security. No organization can solve these cybersecurity problems alone.
That is why sustained investment in what we know works remains essential: secure‑by‑design product lifecycles, Zero Trust architectures, multi‑factor authentication, least‑privileged access, and ongoing security training. Broad adoption and harmonization of established cybersecurity frameworks to ensure consistent resilience across AI‑enabled systems. Trusted cloud environments that enable these practices at scale, supporting secure data handling, continuous patching, and the secure deployment of AI‑enabled tools for defenders.
2. Release advanced capabilities responsibly
As frontier AI systems gain reasoning, coding, and agentic capabilities, some of the most serious security risks arise before deployment, including realistic misuse involving multi‑step reasoning, tool use, and reconnaissance. Technical safety benchmarks remain important, but they are insufficient without rigorous, real‑world testing.
As a result, governments are increasingly establishing pre‑deployment evaluations that combine technical testing with threat modeling. These assessments are most effective when frontier developers work closely with organizations that track national‑security risks. Investing in secure evaluation environments and modern testing methods can help governments keep pace as capabilities advance.
Responsible release practices, including phased and controlled access, are a critical extension of this approach. Our work with Anthropic in Project Glasswing offers one practical model, enabling trusted defenders to evaluate advanced capabilities in constrained settings prior to broader release. Similarly, OpenAI and Microsoft work closely through Trusted Access for Cyber program, and we already support OpenAI’s use of scoped, early deployments for safety and security testing.
AI is changing both the speed of vulnerability discovery and what constitutes meaningful security risk. Faster discovery only improves security if triage, validation, and remediation can keep up.
As AI accelerates discovery, vulnerability management must shift from tracking raw volume to reducing real‑world risk. That means prioritizing vulnerabilities that are genuinely exploitable, assigning clear responsibility for triage and remediation, and using phased, risk‑based disclosure when private coordination improves safety. Above all, systems must be designed around validation and realistic remediation capacity, not the assumption that more findings automatically lead to better security.
Developers of frontier AI models should embed vulnerability coordination and disclosure directly into responsible‑release frameworks. And work with governments and industry to ensure findings are routed to the right owners, acted on early, and supported by clear coordination pathways.
4. Fix faster: Strengthen and accelerate response and remediation
As AI accelerates vulnerability discovery, remediation must keep pace. Initiatives such as DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge show how AI can help both find and fix flaws in open‑source software. Hardening defenses requires investment not just in detection tools but in the people, processes, and infrastructure responsible for fixing vulnerabilities, especially in critical sectors.
Much of the software underpinning critical infrastructure relies on open‑source components maintained by small teams or volunteers with limited security capacity. A surge in AI‑enabled discovery risks overwhelming existing triage and disclosure processes. Efforts such as the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund, alongside investments by Microsoft and others through the Linux Foundation, Alpha‑Omega, and OpenSSF, are helping maintainers adapt in ways that are practical and aligned with existing workflows.
Governments should treat remediation capacity as a core resilience priority, including sustained investment in and support for maintainers, surge capacity during large discovery events, and modernized disclosure pathways—recognizing that effective remediation still largely depends on human judgment, coordination, and time.
5. Advance AI security internationally
AI security is essential to deploy AI at scale. Because AI systems, supply chains, and the risks they introduce operate across borders, national approaches alone will not be sufficient.
Governments and industry should work together to build interoperable international foundations for AI security, including risk evaluation, coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and information sharing. Priorities should include strengthening the defensive use of AI, preventing misuse through shared norms and safeguards, and securing AI systems- and the AI technology stack.
Global participation is critical. Countries and organizations with limited cybersecurity resources or legacy infrastructure are often the most exposed. International cooperation should prioritize capacity‑building, ensuring that the security benefits of AI are realized broadly and equitably.
AI security is not just a safeguard; it is an enabler for innovation and growth. By acting collectively and moving quickly, governments and industry can strengthen global digital resilience and unlock the trusted adoption of AI across economies, critical infrastructure, and public services.
Meeting the moment: Usefrontier AI capabilities to build trust and confidence
Meeting this moment is ultimately about trust: not in any single technology or provider, but in our collective ability to introduce advanced AI responsibly.
Used deliberately and built on strong security foundations, these capabilities can strengthen cybersecurity and reinforce confidence in the systems society depends on. The choice is not between innovation and security but whether we enable them to reinforce one another.
That outcome is within reach. With governments, industry, and infrastructure operators aligned, advanced AI can be deployed in ways that match real‑world defensive capacity and support trusted, lawful action. Done right and working together, frontier AI can help protect the digital infrastructure that underpins modern life and build lasting confidence in its resilience.
For more than a decade, the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) has persistently disrupted cybercrime and nation-state threats targeting people, organizations, and critical infrastructure. Explore major disruptions—and the ongoing cases and operations behind them here: Disrupting cyberthreats since 2008 | Microsoft
Europe is moving fast to capture the benefits of artificial intelligence, recognizing its potential to raise productivity, strengthen competitiveness, and help modernize public services. At the same time, organizations across Europe are focused on digital sovereignty and resilience: retaining control over their data and critical operations in a period of geopolitical volatility.
These priorities go together. That is why one year ago, we announced a set of European digital commitments to respond to these expectations. They focused on five areas:
Help build a broad AI and cloud ecosystem across Europe
Uphold Europe’s digital resilience even when there is geopolitical volatility
Continue to protect the privacy of European data
Help protect and defend Europe’s cybersecurity
Help strengthen Europe’s economic competitiveness, including for open source
Together, they reflect a simple principle: Europe should be able to use global technology at scale, under European rules, with confidence that it will remain available, secure, and under customer control.
One year on, we take stock of how we’ve put those commitments into practice.
1. Building a broad AI and cloud ecosystem across Europe
A year ago, we detailed plans to increase our European datacenter capacity by 40%, expand cloud operations across 16 European countries, and reach more than 200 datacenters on the continent by 2027. Since then, we have announced new multi-billion euro investments in Portugal, Norway, and the UK, adding to the increased investments announced in Denmark, Germany, France, Italy,Sweden, Spain,Poland, and Switzerland. We also launched new cloud regions in Austria, Denmark, and Belgium. Together, this growing capacity is helping European organizations access cloud and AI capabilities closer to home while supporting sustainable growth through investments such as matching 100% of our annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy.
We emphasize now, as we did when first announcing our digital commitments, that European laws apply to our business practices in Europe, just as local laws govern local practices elsewhere in the world. We remain committed not only to building digital infrastructure for Europe, but also to respecting the role that laws across Europe play in regulating our products and services.
2. Upholding Europe’s digital resilience in a volatile geopolitical environment
For many customers, digital sovereignty is now about more than where data is stored. Institutions and businesses across Europe also want to know whether they can rely on critical digital services when geopolitical pressures rise, and whether they can adopt advanced AI capabilities without losing control.
We have made our Digital Resilience Commitment legally binding in contracts with European national governments and the European Commission, including a commitment to promptly and vigorously contest in court any order by any government to suspend or cease cloud operations in Europe.
We also committed to continuity measures, including expanded partnerships with European cloud partners that can support our customers’ operational continuity in extreme scenarios. Reinforcing this approach, we launched a European resiliency partnership with Delos Cloud to safeguard business continuity in Europe in times of crisis. This work also supports closer cooperation among Europe’s sovereign cloud providers, including crisis response coordination and continuity options designed to help customers maintain operations even in the event of geopolitical disruptions.
We also expanded our strategic partnership with Capgemini to offer fully integrated, managed sovereign cloud services. In addition, we are deepening our collaboration with Accenture to help organizations design and implement sovereign cloud and AI solutions, supporting customers in highly regulated sectors as they balance innovation with control, compliance, and resilience.
To further strengthen governance and operational oversight in Europe, Microsoft’s European activities are now overseen by a board of directors composed exclusively of European nationals, reinforcing regional accountability and our commitments to cybersecurity, resilience, and compliance under European law.
3. Protecting the privacy of European data
Privacy, transparency, and customer control remain central to Europe’s expectations for cloud and AI. That’s why over the past year we have built a portfolio of sovereign cloud options, spanning public cloud, private cloud, and national partner solutions, so that customers can choose the level of control and oversight that best fits their legal, operational, and risk requirements. This portfolio spans infrastructure, productivity, and AI workloads across cloud, hybrid, or fully local deployments.
We have continued to implement our Defending Your Data Initiative, including our commitment to challenge government data requests for EU public‑sector or commercial customers where we have a lawful basis to do so.
We also completed the EU Data Boundary, enabling European customer data to be stored and processed within the EU. We have since expanded these commitments to cover AI-powered productivity services, so that the processing of customer data for tools like Copilot can also take place within Europe.
In order to further reinforce transparency and oversight, we announced Data Guardian, which ensures that all remote access by Microsoft engineers to systems that store and process customer data in Europe is approved and monitored by personnel residing in Europe and logged in a tamper-evident ledger.
Over the past year, we have strengthened our sovereign solutions through new contractual assurances, closer partnerships with European providers, and expanded customer support.
The Microsoft Sovereign Cloud has been enhanced to help customers meet Europe’s growing expectations for control, resilience, and compliance without slowing down innovation. Recent updates add new governance and operational controls, expand productivity options for regulated environments, and strengthen encryption, while making it easier to use advanced AI capabilities that are fully customer-controlled. This includes solutions where AI models can run on customer-owned infrastructure with limited connectivity or even in fully disconnected environments. Earlier this week, we added new capabilities to our private cloud offering allowing organizations to run much larger workloads locally.
Sovereign Landing Zone provides a cloud architecture that embeds governance, compliance, and sovereign controls, helping European organizations deploy cloud environments that align with European regulatory requirements, with less complexity.
External validation of this approach continues to grow. Microsoft was named a leader in Forrester’s latest assessment of sovereign cloud platforms, recognizing the strength of our public cloud, private cloud, and partner-operated approach.
To help customers put this into practice, we opened our first three European Sovereignty and Resilience Studios in Munich, Brussels, and Amsterdam, where governments and enterprises work side by side with Microsoft’s engineers, policy experts, and security teams to capture the full promise of cloud and AI. Additional studios are planned to open in Microsoft’s nine other Innovation Hubs across Europe.
4. Helping protect and defend Europe’s cybersecurity
Cyber threats don’t stop at national borders, and Europe’s security depends on strong public‑private cooperation. During the last year, we have rolled out our European Security Program (ESP), an offering available at no cost to governments across the UK, EU, EFTA, and EU accession countries. It expands threat intelligence sharing and prioritizes new partnerships and investments to help protect critical infrastructure, disrupt cybercrime, and strengthen Europe’s collective ability to respond to attacks.
This program is live across 27 countries across Europe, providing support at no cost within a clear scope through structured briefings, early warnings, and tailored information sharing relevant to each country’s environment.
We have provided cybersecurity support to NATO, Ukraine, and other European governments, including threat intelligence, election protection, and disrupting attacks targeting European governments, companies, and citizens.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when we helped move critical data and services to secure datacenters across Europe and defend against sustained cyberattacks and eventual kinetic attacks, Microsoft has continued to support the country without interruption, providing more than $600 million in free technology, security, and financial assistance.
We have also expanded collaboration by embedding investigators with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). Together, we are translating technical threat intelligence into coordinated operational action, linking visibility into cybercriminal infrastructure with law enforcement’s ability to investigate, coordinate, and disrupt. This model underpinned recent cybercrime takedowns, including Tycoon 2FA, Lumma Stealer, and RedVDS. And, through our partnership with CyberPeace Institute, more than 300 European nonprofits are receiving cybersecurity support.
All of this work was reinforced in July with the appointment of Freddy Dezeure as Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, a European national based in Europe, who is coordinating Microsoft’s compliance with European cybersecurity regulations. Our European executive cybersecurity presence and oversight are closely aligned with Microsoft’s broader cybersecurity governance, combining European guidelines with globally consistent security practices.
5. Strengthening Europe’s economic competitiveness, including for open source
We continue to support open ecosystems, including open source, to keep our AI and cloud platforms accessible and interoperable, and to give customers deployment options that fit their needs. There are almost 25 million European software developers active on GitHub, making more than 155 million contributions to public projects in the last year alone. Through Microsoft Foundry, customers can choose from more than 11,000 AI models, both open source and commercial, and run them in sovereign public or private clouds from cloud to the edge. This enables customers to deploy the same Microsoft Foundry model catalog within sovereignty‑aligned infrastructure.
But it is also vital that we support AI solutions that are more multilingual and attuned to cultural context. As part of our commitment to advance European commerce and culture, we launched LINGUA in September 2025 to support projects that collect high‑quality speech and text datasets for Europe’s underrepresented languages. Following an open call, we selected 12 projects spanning 16 languages and dialects across 10 countries, bringing together universities, nonprofits, a government language center, and a public broadcaster to create and digitize open datasets, preserve heritage languages, and develop new evaluation resources for multilingual AI.
We have new AI for Culture projects to digitally preserve iconic European sites and artifacts, including a digital replica of Notre Dame with the French Institut du Patrimoine and Iconem, and we are working with leading institutions to digitize historic cinematic model opera sets and enable access to metadata associated with millions of artifacts. We are also working with the Vatican Library on digitization and AI analysis of historic documents. All of this builds on preservation efforts underway since 2019 for landmarks such as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Mont Saint Michel in France, and Ancient Olympia in Greece.
Relatedly, Céline Geissmann was chosen to lead our Microsoft Open Innovation Center in Strasbourg to work at the intersection of AI, languages, culture, open data, and innovation.
Staying accountable as Europe’s digital landscape evolves
These commitments are our North Star for how we engage in Europe, grounded in European law and values, shaped by European priorities, and designed to progress over time.
As Europe’s digital and geopolitical context continues to evolve, we will keep engaging with policymakers, regulators, customers, and partners to test whether what we are delivering matches what Europe needs. Where it does not, we will adapt.
Trust cannot be claimed. It needs to be earned through our actions, day by day. We are committed to earning that trust by listening, acting, and delivering for Europe.
For more than 40 years, Microsoft has supported and scaled Canadian innovation. Now, with more than 5,300 employees and 11 offices across Canada, Microsoft Canada’s technology ecosystem is a trusted partner and key driver of economic opportunity across the country, with $60 billion contributed to Canada’s GDP each year through our cloud customers and partner network and more than 426,000 jobs supported—over 2% of Canada’s workforce.
As we look ahead, we are proud to be building the critical infrastructure Canada needs to power its digital future.
In December 2025, Microsoft announced the largest investment in our history in Canada, a $19 billion commitment between 2023 and 2027 to expand cloud and AI infrastructure, strengthen digital sovereignty, advance cybersecurity, and support skills and jobs for Canadians.
Today, as we move from investment to implementation, we want to share how we are putting those commitments into practice through a Community-First approach to AI infrastructure, one that is globally consistent in principle and delivered in ways that reflect Canada’s communities, institutions, and priorities.
CommunityFirst, Built for Canada
AI infrastructure brings enormous opportunity. But we know Canadians also have real questions about affordability, energy and water use, jobs, and the impact large-scale infrastructure has on local communities.
Those questions matter. Technological progress only works when communities see themselves in the benefits.
At Microsoft, we believe communities should share in the benefits of AI infrastructure, and they should not bear the costs. That belief is reflected in five Community–First principles that guide how we build and operate datacentres around the world—and how we partner locally in Canada:
Together, these principles shape how we build and operate our datacentres across Ontario and Québec and how we partner with governments, utilities, educators, community organizations, labour groups, and local nonprofits.
Below, we outline what each principle means in practice and the concrete steps we are taking to put these commitments into action here in Canada.
Paying our way on electricity
As Canada expands AI and cloud capacity, electricity systems are under pressure. Microsoft is committed to ensuring that our datacentres do not increase electricity prices for Canadians. In practical terms, this means that our infrastructure growth must be matched by responsible planning, full cost recovery, and investments that support long-term system reliability.
While electricity systems are provincially governed and solutions vary by region, our commitment is consistent across the country: AI infrastructure growth must support grid resilience and affordability for communities.
To deliver on this principle, Microsoft will:
Work closely with provinces, utilities, system operators, and regulators to plan new supply in advance
Design and operate highly energy-efficient datacentres
Support public policies that advance affordable, reliable, and sustainable power
Pay the full cost of the electricity we use, including the cost of new generation, transmission, and grid upgrades
Our commitment in action
In Ontario and Québec, we are working closely with provincial governments, utilities, system operators, and regulators to align datacentre growth with planned investments in generation and transmission.
We pay the full cost of the electricity we use. We also continue to design and operate next-generation datacentres that are significantly more energy efficient, reducing the amount of energy required for each unit of computing while scaling to meet growing demand.
To date, we have also paid for substations and fully dedicated the substations and land to provincial utilities. By paying our full share and planning ahead, we aim to support Canada’s economic growth without overstressing the electric grid or shifting costs onto households or small businesses.
Managing water responsibly
Canada’s cooler climate is a real advantage when it comes to water stewardship. In Ontario and Québec, our datacentres are designed with a reduction-first approach, relying primarily on outside air and using water for cooling less than 5% of the year. When water is used, it is cycled efficiently through the system multiple times and managed in compliance with local regulations. This results in relatively low projected water withdrawals that reflect both local conditions and responsible designs.
Microsoft’s approach to water in Canada prioritizes:
Minimizing potable water usethrough efficient design and advanced, industry-leading cooling technologies that maximize free air cooling, limiting the use of water
Transparency and early engagementwith provincial and local authorities on water decisions
Where communities identify opportunities to strengthen local water systems, we believe infrastructure investment should contribute to broader watershed health, not compete with it.
Our commitment in action
To bring this principle to life, Microsoft is taking locally grounded steps to strengthen water systems in the Canadian communities where we operate.
In Ontario and Québec, we will partner on region–specific water projects that improve infrastructure resilience, restore watersheds, and support long-term stewardship. These projects, developed with local governments, conservation partners, and research institutions, include:
Rainwater harvesting: We design our facilities to make use of what is already available. We’ve implemented rainwater harvesting that further offsets freshwater demand. Our on‑site systems are projected to capture approximately 1.5 million litres of rainwater per year for use in datacentre operations.
LEED Goldcertificationis incorporated into Canadian datacentre designs. All Canadian datacentres will be monitored throughout the construction lifecycle and will undergo the certification process as they near completion.
Wetland and watershed restoration initiatives that improve water quality and reduce flood risk, including supporting Ducks Unlimited Canada to plant hundreds of trees and shrubs in the Lorette River Watershed.
Projects that strengthen monitoring, conservation, and long-term ecosystemhealth, including a donation toward the preservation of 325 acres of wetland in the Niagara Escarpment.
Together, these efforts reflect a reduction first approach: minimizing reliance on potable water in our datacentres while investing in the resilience of shared water systems communities depend on every day.
Creating jobs and economic opportunity
In Canada, Microsoft’s datacentre construction is delivered through unionized skilled trades labour, supportinghigh quality jobs, strong safety standards, and apprenticeship pathways.Beyond construction, our focus is on building durable pathways into long–term careers connected to AI infrastructure and the digital economy.Through partnerships with educators, workforce organizations, and labour groups, Microsoft is working to ensure that Canadians can access the jobs created by this investment.
Our commitment in action
We are advancing this principle through several concrete steps:
Increasing transparency:We will publish clearer information on the jobs created and local suppliers engaged at our Canadian datacentre sites. This will include aggregated national figures, with local detail available where appropriate, providing communities, governments, and stakeholders with a clearer picture of how AI infrastructure investment supports local economies. Microsoft’s datacentre builds in Canada employ approximately2,000individuals across sites during construction. Additionally, more than 400 Canadian businesses are involved during the construction phase. Once built and operational, Microsoft’s Canadian datacentres will employ approximately 250 FTEs, and approximately400contractorsto maintain and operate its sites.
Deepening labour partnerships:We will continue to work with Canadian trade unions and workforce organizations, leveraging existing North American relationships and Canadian labour expertise to support safe, skilled, and inclusive job creation.
Contributing to local communities
Datacentres are long–term investments. They contribute directly to municipal tax bases, helping fund essential public services, without asking for special tax treatment.
The arrival of a corporate citizen like Microsoft is a real benefit to our community in L’Ancienne-Lorette, particularly through significant contribution to municipal tax revenues. It also points to a positive impact on community engagement, with discussions already underway.”
- Gaétan Pageau, Mayor, City of L’Ancienne-Lorette
Strong communities are essential to sustainable growth. That is why Microsoft invests not only in infrastructure, but also in the social and economic foundations that support it.
Our commitment in action
Across Ontario and Québec, we are continuing to expand partnerships that support:
Workforce training and economic inclusion, including digital skilling for underrepresented groups through NPower Canada
Donations to support environmental conservation, restoration, and climate resilience projects with Ducks Unlimited Canada
Digital access and community led innovation, including support for local community projects through the Microsoft community funds
These investments help ensure that AI infrastructure contributes to the vitality of the communities where it is built.
Investing in skills and what comes next
Infrastructure alone is not enough. The real opportunity comes when its benefits are widely shared. It is the foundation upon which others build: startups launching new ideas, researchers advancing discovery, educators preparing the next generation, and governments and communities solving real challenges.
To fully realize the promise of AI, Canadians must have access to the skills, tools, and opportunities to participate in, and shape the AI economy. That means ensuring AI doesn’t remain concentrated in a few places or organizations, but instead diffuses across our economy and communities, empowering people in every sector to innovate, build, and lead.
Our commitment in action
Microsoft is announcing several new Canada specific actions to expand access to AI and digital skills:
Launching national AI skilling initiatives:Through Microsoft Elevate, we are launching a new National AI Skilling Grant with Digital Moment to expand AI Education Training, delivering free, bilingual AI workshops and classroom ready resources to 20,000 educators and students across the country.
Advancing Indigenous AI fluency: Microsoft Elevate is partnering with Ampere and the Pinnguaq Foundation to further support Indigenous AI Fluency and Workforce Readiness Hubs – a national network of 13 makerspaces supporting AI learning, data privacy, and workforce readiness for youth and communities, including integration supporting teachers and students in Nunavut’s K–12 and post-secondary education system.
Empowering the nonprofit sector: In Canada, we are launching Microsoft Elevate for Changemakers and AI for Nonprofits credential through a community-led approach in partnership with Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR) and Digital Moment. CCNDR anchors the work in nonprofit trust, sector insight, and national reach, while Digital Moment will lead with high quality training and delivery in both official languages. Together, this new credential will equip 5,000 nonprofit professionals and leaders across Canada with practical, responsible AI skills they can apply immediately in their work.
Building the future, together
AI infrastructure is most powerful when it is built with trust, transparency, and partnership. That is why our approach starts and ends with communities. We are committed to building AI infrastructure in Canada in a way that earns trust, supports local priorities, and strengthens long–term prosperity. As this work continues, we will keep listening, learning, and engaging, because building the future of AI means building it with communities, not just in them.
On Tuesday, February 23rd, Microsoft Senior Director of Education and Workforce Policy Allyson Knox testified before the House Education & Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. To view the proceedings, visit the committee’s website.
STATEMENT OF ALLYSON KNOX
SENIOR DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE POLICY
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
BEFORE THE
EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, ELEMENTARY, AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
“BUILDING AN AI-READY AMERICA: TEACHING IN THE AI AGE”
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Good afternoon and thank you, Chairman Kiley, Ranking Member Bonamici, Members of the Subcommittee for inviting me to testify today. My name is Allyson Knox. I am Senior Director of Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft, and I am pleased to have this opportunity to discuss issues related to artificial intelligence and its impact on teachers.
Today, I will share insights we have gathered from teachers about their experiences, challenges, and needs as they integrate AI in education; outline the steps Microsoft and other organizations are taking to facilitate this transition; and recommend legislative approaches to help policymakers strengthen these efforts. These legislative approaches include supporting professional development for teachers; encouraging public-private partnerships; promoting AI literacy; providing guidance on responsible AI use; and supporting innovation.
I would like to begin by quoting from Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith, in his recent foreword to Degrees of Change: What AI Means for Education and the Next Generation[i]:
“Generative AI has become the fastest-spreading technology in human history, adopted at a pace that even the most seasoned technologists could scarcely imagine. This speed is breathtaking, but it also compels us to pause and ask, “Are we ready for what comes next?” AI’s promise is extraordinary. It can help solve problems that have challenged humanity for decades—improving health outcomes, advancing education, and unlocking new opportunities for economic growth. But, like every transformative technology before it, AI brings new questions and new responsibilities.”
This thought-provoking quote is apt for today’s conversation on how AI is impacting teachers. The speed of AI adoption in our nation’s schools and classrooms is indeed breathtaking. Just three years ago, AI had barely made a mark in education. However, our 2025 Study on AI in Education found that 80% of U.S. K-12 teachers have used AI in their roles or for school-related purposes at least once or twice and one-fifth report daily use of AI. Additionally, 58% of K-12 teachers think AI usage at their school/district will increase in the next year.[ii]
What we are hearing from teachers on the impact of AI:
The breadth of adoption has been profound. We have heard directly from teachers who are using AI to streamline lesson planning, curriculum development, and personalize student learning in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago.[iii] AI is also reducing the time it takes to carry out administrative tasks, allowing more time for teachers to focus on their students.
Despite these benefits, we know teachers face challenges when it comes to AI in the classroom. We found roughly one in three teachers lack confidence in using AI effectively and responsibly. Many teachers also express concerns about how AI can exacerbate cheating and are worried about issues such as data privacy and student safety.
Teachers know AI is here to stay, and based upon countless surveys, forums, and focus groups, teachers are ready to tackle these challenges and ask for support in three main areas:
AI literacy – Teachers want the skills, knowledge, and support to build AI literacy and critical thinking in their students;
AI guardrails – Teachers want students to use AI responsibly and safely; and
AI tools – Teachers want classroom-ready AI tools and opportunities to provide feedback that improve them.
I’m excited to share a few ways Microsoft, along with many of our partners, are committed to providing teachers with the support they are requesting.
1.AI literacy – Teachers want the skills, knowledge, and support to build AI literacy and critical thinking in their students
At the core of this support is listening to and learning from teachers and understanding what they want and need to become AI literate themselves and teach AI literacy to their students. These conversations have resulted in exciting initiatives, including the recent launch of the Microsoft Elevate for teachers program, part of the company’s broader commitment[iii] to help schools and educators build skills, expand opportunities, and ensure everyone benefits from AI.
Microsoft Elevate for Educators
The Microsoft Elevate for Educators program equips educators and school leaders with access to one of the world’s largest and most connected peer educator networks and offers free professional development resources. It will provide free access to a new industry-recognized credential for educators, developed in partnership with one of the leading national nonprofit focused on technology and innovation (ISTE+ASCD).[vi] This partnership is aligned to the AI Literacy Framework, which is intended to help educators gain confidence and expertise in integrating AI into their teaching and learning. As part of this work, we also support ISTE+ASCD in advancing AI in teacher preparation programs.
National Academy for AI Instruction
Along with OpenAI and Anthropic, we are supporting the National Academy for AI Instruction, through a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers. The Academy describes itself as a national training hub designed by educators – shaping the future of AI in public education, grounded in safety and people-first technology, and improving student learning. From everything we have heard from teachers, this is exactly the type of support they need to promote AI literacy. The Academy also focuses on building critical thinking skills for students and educators.
Rob Weil, who heads up the Academy, recently shared an update on their work with me. He noted through direct engagement with teachers, they listen to what the primary concerns teachers have around using AI in the classroom are, and then work with them to design trainings that are directly responsive to their concerns and meet them where they are – including using whatever technology they are already using in their classroom.
Their goal is to train 400,000 teachers over the next 5 years. The Academy is centered around a “train the trainer” model, building capacity to provide AI literacy to teachers at scale – providing the potential of millions of teachers to benefit from this initiative. Weil noted that interest and participation in the Academy has been taking off, largely due to word of mouth. This month, 1,000 teachers showed up for a virtual session, and another in-person session was overprescribed had to turn away a hundred interested teachers.
Why the interest? Teachers want to learn from their peers and trusted partners; they also want to ensure they are using AI effectively and safely. Weil explained that one of the most popular aspects of the training is centered around the Academy’s Commonsense Guardrails for Using Advanced Technology in Schools,[v] which helps empower teachers to address the challenges they are facing in implementing AI. Some teachers describe AI as the wild-wild west, and this guide has helped provide a roadmap for understanding how to navigate bringing this technology into the classroom.
The trainings also provide real-world, hands-on experiences with using technology which teachers themselves are bringing to the table. At the trainings, teachers are asked what they could use the most help with and then have time to experiment with different tools to do things like start a draft of a lesson plan or an outline for a rubric – allowing them more time and flexibility to incorporate their expertise. In addition, the Academy creates opportunities for educators to influence the development of AI for schools.
Support for Special Education Teachers
We also recognize the potential that AI holds to support students with disabilities – and the need to ensure special education teachers have the support and resources to fully unlock this technology.
Recently, we launched a course to support educators in exploring how Microsoft AI tools can be thoughtfully used in special education environments to reduce administrative demands, strengthen accessibility, and support clear communication with families. Throughout the learning path, responsible use of AI, privacy, and transparency are emphasized so educators can determine when and how AI fits into their practice in ways that align with student needs and professional values.
After our engagements, we tailored our trainings to special education teachers by incorporating their direct feedback. Key topics included privacy with sensitive medical information and using AI to assist parents and caregivers in IEP meetings. We emphasized clear communication, parental inclusion, and ensuring parents understand the meeting’s goals and how best to support their children.
Finally, special education involves a collaborative team beyond just teachers, and we’ve revised our approach to address the needs of occupational therapists, physical therapists, and all other members involved in special education.
Support for Teachers in Rural America
We have found there’s a significant gap in daily AI usage by urban teachers versus their rural and suburban counterparts (39% vs. 24%).[iv] This gap underscores why ensuring AI tools, resources, and professional development are attuned to the needs of rural teachers is critical.
For the last five years, we’ve been working with the National Future Farmers of America (FFA) and agricultural science teachers to develop FarmBeats for Students and ensure it is responsive to agricultural science teachers’ needs. We engaged in an iterative process with them – collaboratively designing and building curriculum and training with agricultural science teachers from the very beginning of development.
FarmBeats for Students brings AI to agricultural education through a hands-on educational program that brings precision agriculture directly into the classroom. The program consists of an affordable hardware kit and a free curriculum aligned with rigorous educational standards. Activities give students direct experience with topics like digital sensors, data analysis, and AI.
We brought FarmBeats for Students to the National FFA convention and held a series of workshops with teachers across the country. They experimented with the kits and provided input to ensure this technology was directly responsive to what they wanted to see in the classroom.
In addition to our partnership with the National FFA, Microsoft helps meet the needs of rural teachers by deploying the online content referenced above through Elevate, as well as supporting community-based organizations that help facilitate activities and events which promote AI literacy in rural communities.
AI Literacy Frameworks, Standards, and Guidance
Teachers want frameworks that help them integrate AI into their classrooms. We are pleased there is bipartisan interest in establishing strong frameworks around AI and education, especially highlighting the need for widespread AI literacy. Microsoft has provided support, guidance, and input to organizations and initiatives such as Code.org and TeachAI who work to develop and promote frameworks, guidance, and standards.
Microsoft encourages state and local policymakers to review and leverage these resources as they incorporate AI in education:
The TeachAI Foundational Policies[vii]: This resource, endorsed by dozens of policy organizations and associations, provides practical guidance for national, state, and local leaders to harness AI’s benefits in teaching and learning while mitigating risks. The policies focus on five priorities—fostering leadership, promoting AI literacy, providing clear guidance, building educator capacity, and supporting responsible innovation—to ensure AI strengthens education systems and prepares learners for an AI‑enabled workforce.
The TeachAI AI Guidance for Schools Toolkit[viii]: The Toolkit helps education authorities, school leaders, and educators develop clear, responsible guidance for using AI in K–12 education, balancing potential benefits with risks such as privacy, bias, and academic integrity. It provides a practical framework, principles, sample policies, and communication templates to support safe and human‑centered AI adoption across school systems. The Toolkit has been used by the majority of states in constructing guidance for schools.
The AI Literacy Framework[ix]: The AI Literacy Framework defines the knowledge, skills, and attitudes students and educators need to understand, use, and critically evaluate AI in education. It is organized around four core domains—Engaging with AI, Creating with AI, Managing AI, and Designing AI—and emphasizes critical thinking, ethics, and human judgment alongside technical understanding. It also emphasizes the foundational computer science concepts that prepare students to not just use AI but understand how AI works and its societal impacts. The framework is designed to be interdisciplinary, practical, and durable, helping schools integrate AI literacy into curriculum, professional learning, and policy in age‑appropriate ways.
2.AI guardrails – Teachers want students to use AI responsibly and safely
We have heard from teachers that one of the greatest hesitations they have with AI is around safety for students. This includes ensuring AI tools used in the classroom protect student privacy, don’t collect their information, and are safe from a mental health perspective.
Some of the strategies teachers use to promote safety are a significant focus in the professional development referenced earlier. In addition, the frameworks include key components to help teachers understand responsible AI use.
Microsoft takes our responsibility as a developer and deployer of AI technology very seriously. Paramount to deploying this technology in classrooms is ensuring it is responsible. Microsoft has identified six principles that we believe should guide AI development and use.
Fairness: AI systems should treat all people fairly.
Reliability and Safety: AI systems should perform reliably and safely.
Privacy and Security: AI systems should be secure and respect privacy.
Inclusiveness: AI systems should empower everyone and engage all people.
Transparency: AI systems should be understandable.
Accountability: People should be accountable for AI systems.
These principles are the foundation for other tools and resources we share with teachers to provide guidelines for them to deploy AI in the classroom.
As another example of our commitment to safety, earlier this month, on Safer Internet Day, we launched our new Microsoft Education Security Toolkit,[x] which provides educators and IT teams with practical guidance tailored to the realities of modern education.
3. AI tools – Teachers want classroom-ready AI tools and opportunities to provide feedback that improve them
Teachers often lack the right AI tools tailored to their needs for boosting student achievement. It’s essential to develop AI solutions based on teacher input rather than just delivering generic options. Microsoft strives to meet this responsibility by designing tools and partnerships that address educators’ needs. We believe this approach creates a critical feedback loop that will allow us to constantly evolve our tools to maximize their benefit in the classroom over time.
In fact, at Microsoft, our engineering teams collaborate closely with educators and students to advance the development of AI tools for classroom use. We partner with teacher organizations and directly engage with the disability community to better understand instructional requirements and design technology that enhance student learning outcomes. Some examples include:
Reading Progress
One of the tools we offer to teachers is called Reading Progress, which helps teachers analyze students’ fluency and generates reading passages and comprehension questions.
From the beginning of development, we worked with individual teachers through our Educator Insiders program and with entire schools or districts through our Technology Adoption Preview, where educators test prototypes of our products and provide feedback.
For example, teachers asked for a tool that could generate tailored passages to meet the needs of their students. We incorporated that feedback and now, teachers can get as specific as saying they want a passage generated about sports that is for a third-grade reading level and includes specific words their class is learning.
Teachers also told us they wanted reading comprehension questions generated faster and better. With AI, it’s easy to do this in a high-quality way.
Teachers report increased comprehension, higher reading fluency, and higher scores, especially for struggling or reluctant readers.
Teach for America (TFA)
Microsoft has been a proud supporter of TFA’s efforts to improve the education system and expand opportunities for children across the U.S. It has been great to see all of the ways in which TFA has worked to equip their teachers with AI fluency in order to help them integrate this technology into the classroom.
TFA recently completed a cloud migration to Microsoft Azure, unlocking countless avenues to improve program design and delivery, direct the most possible funds toward its mission to ensure all kids have access to an excellent education, and evolve to offer the best learning options inside and outside the classroom.
Where do we go from here
What is both exciting and daunting about AI is that while we can take lessons learned from previous technological transformations in the classroom, much of the book has not been written on AI adoption. Meaning tech companies, teachers, government, and other stakeholders have the opportunity to shape where AI goes in education and beyond.
I want to conclude my remarks today with policy recommendations for the Committee to consider:
Support professional development for teachers to effectively teach about AI and responsibly integrate AI tools in the classroom.
At the Federal level, this means providing priorities for competitive grant programs, such as those recently proposed by the U.S. Department of Education.
Encourage public-private partnerships.
Incentivize and prioritize Federal funds and grants that support partnerships between technology companies and educational programs, including apprenticeship and credentialed organizations, to develop up to-date AI curriculum.
Promote AI literacy across the U.S.
Integrate AI skills and concepts, including their foundational principles, social impacts, and ethical concerns, into existing curriculum and instruction.
Provide guidance.
Equip schools with guidance on the safe, effective, and responsible use of AI, including considerations related to student privacy, data security, accessibility, transparency, and appropriate human oversight.
Invest in innovation.
Support research and evaluation to better understand the impacts of AI in education, including its effects on teaching and learning and student outcomes, and to identify effective, scalable practices that mitigate the digital divide.
As we mark Safer Internet Day 2026, we’re reflecting on a simple but enduring principle: safety must be designed into online services, not bolted on. Microsoft’s work in this space spans more than two decades—from technology solutions like PhotoDNA to our investments in responsible gaming, public-private partnerships, and empowering users through education. This foundation guides our approach as we help individuals and families navigate a rapidly evolving landscape shaped by new technologies and new risks and as we innovate with next-generation AI offerings. At a moment when 91% of people tell us they worry about harms introduced by AI, our commitment to responsible innovation has never been more important—especially for our youngest users.
Read on for more about our longstanding efforts tocreate a safer digital environment, plus key findings from our Global Online Safety Survey and new examples of our work to empower families and communities through tools, research, and educational resources—including the latest release in Minecraft Education’s CyberSafe series.
Ten years of safety research
2026 marks the tenth year of our annual Global Online Safety Survey research. For a decade, we have invested in surveying teens and adults around the world about their experiences and perceptions of life online—aiming to provide fresh insights to support our collective work. That’s 130,000+ interviews across 37 countries, with the results available on our website. Ten years later, respondents tell us that they feel more connected and more productive, but less safe online.
This year’s Global Online Safety Survey also highlights the complexity of the digital environment young people now inhabit. Teens’ exposure to risk rose again, with hate speech (35%), scams (29%), and cyberbullying (23%) among the most commonly experienced harms. At the same time, teens demonstrated striking resilience: 72% talked to someone after experiencing a risk, and reporting behavior increased for the second consecutive year. But worries about the misuse of AIcontinue, underscoring againwhy safety-by-design for AI is essential, not optional. Find the full results and country-level summaries here.
Year on year, the research has told a story of evolving online safety risks and of the real-world impact. In 2026, the call to action is more urgent than ever—unless industry can deliver safe and age-appropriate experiences, young people risk losing access to technology.At Microsoft, spanning across our teams from Windows to Xbox, we have sought to continuously evolve our approach and to lead industry in advancing tailored and thoughtful safety solutions.
Evolving to meet the moment
Looking ahead, we know we need to continue to build strong guardrails to tackle acute risks and to leverage our experience while being informed by new research, new perspectives, and new technologies. The application process closed yesterday for our first AI Futures Youth Council, to be comprised of teens from across the US and EU. We’re looking forward to bringing those teens together soon for a first meeting to get their direct feedback on the role they want emerging technology to play in their lives and how we can best support their safety.
Microsoft has partnered with Cyberlite on a second youth-centered initiative to understand how teens aged 13–17 are engaging with AI companions. Through codesign workshops with students in India and Singapore, we’re capturing young people’s own perspectives on the benefits, risks, and emotional dimensions of AI use—insights that will directly inform educational resources for teens, parents, and educators. Early findings from the first workshop in December 2025 show that young people value AI as a judgment free space while also recognizing the tradeoffs: privacy risks, overreliance, and erosion of critical thinking loom larger for them than bad advice.
We’re also thinking about how we define safety in the next era of Windows, leveraging the Family Safety controls that have been integrated for over a decade. As many countries have raised the local age for digital consent, more parents will have the option to enable parental controls for teens up to the age of 18—leveraging these tools as part of a holistic approach to digital parenting. And to help parents set up and understand Family Safety, we’ve developed a shortnew guide.
Safety is also about transparency, empowerment, and education. At Xbox, bringing the joy of gaming to everyone means remaining transparent about the many ways we innovate so players, parents, and caregivers can feel confident that Xbox continues to be a place for positive play. You can read more about our recently published Xbox Transparency Report and the tools and resources available to players on the Xbox Wire blog.
We’re also excited to announce the latest release in Minecraft Education’s CyberSafe series: CyberSafe: Bad Connection? This series of immersive Minecraft worlds and educational resources is free and helps translate complex risks into fun learning experiences that meet young people in their favorite blocky world. Bad Connection?—the fifth in the series—reflects our commitment to evolving to meet new and challenging risks, with a focus on tackling serious risks related to online recruitment and radicalization. Learn more about how to access this new Minecraft world here.
The CyberSafe series has reached more than 80 million downloads since 2022 through a partnership between Minecraft Education, Xbox, and Microsoft, helping a generation of young players build the agency, resilience, and digital citizenship they need to navigate an increasingly online world. As part of our commitment to ensure people have the knowledge and skills they need to benefit from technology and stay safe, Microsoft Elevate is empowering educators and students with tools and guidance to build safer, more responsible digital habits, recognizing that AI is transforming how people learn, work, and connect. Our commitment to helping young people access technology safely is also why we’ve partnered with organizations, like the National 4-H Council to prepare young people for an AI-powered world through AI literacy and digital safety curriculum and game-based learning with Minecraft Education.
As we look ahead, our goal is clear: build technology that is safe by design, guided by evidence, and informed through partnership. The internet has changed profoundly over the past decade, and so too have the expectations of the people who use it. Safer Internet Day is a reminder that progress requires sustained collaboration across industry, civil society, researchers, and families.
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Global Online Safety Survey Methodology
Microsoft has published annual research since 2016 that surveys how people of varying ages use and view online technology. This latest consumer-based report is based on a survey of nearly 15,000 teens (13–17) and adults that was conducted this past summer in 15 countries examining people’s attitudes and perceptions about online safety tools and interactions. Responses to online safety differ depending on the country. Full results can be accessedhere.
Microsoft’s 5-point plan to partner with local communities across the United States
This year marks America’s 250th year of independence. One of the trends that has repeatedly shaped the nation’s history is again in the news. As we’re experiencing at Microsoft, AI is the latest in a long line of new technologies to require large-scale infrastructure development.
Microsoft today is launching a new initiative to build what we call Community-First AI Infrastructure—a commitment to do this work differently than some others and to do it responsibly. This commits us to the concrete steps needed to be a good neighbor in the communities where we build, own, and operate our datacenters. It reflects our sense of civic responsibility as well as a broad and long-term view of what it will take to run a successful AI infrastructure business. In short, we will set a high bar.
As we launch this initiative, we think about it in the context of both the headlines of the day and the lessons from the past. Beginning in the 1770s, the country has advanced through successive eras built on huge infrastructure development based on canals, railroads, power plants, and the electrical grid, followed by the telephone system, highways, and airports. AI infrastructure has become the next chapter in this story.
Like major buildouts of the past, AI infrastructure is expensive and complex. Investments are advancing at a rapid pace. Today, these require large-scale spending by the private sector in land, construction, electricity, liquid cooling, high-bandwidth connectivity, and operations. This revives a longstanding question: how can our nation build transformative infrastructure in a way that strengthens, rather than strains, the local communities where it takes root?
Large AI investments are accelerating just as datacenter concerns are growing in local communities. The pattern is familiar. Whether it was canals, railroads, the electrical grid, or the interstate highway system, each era produced its own conflicts over who bore the burdens of progress. One enduring lesson is that successful infrastructure buildouts will only progress when communities feel that the gains outweigh the costs. Long-term success requires a commitment to address public needs, including by the private companies making these investments.
This must start by understanding local concerns. Residential electricity rates have recently risen in dozens of states, driven in part by several years of inflation, supply chain constraints, and long-overdue grid upgrades. Communities value new jobs and property tax revenue, but not if they come with higher power bills or tighter water supplies. Without addressing these issues directly, even supportive communities will question the role of datacenters in their backyard.
As a company, we believe in the many positive advances AI will bring to America’s future. From stronger economic growth to better medical advances and more affordable products, we believe AI will make a difference in everyday lives. But we also recognize that AI, like other fundamental technological shifts, will create new challenges as well. And we believe that tech companies like Microsoft have both a unique opportunity to help contribute to these advances and a heightened responsibility to address these challenges head-on.
This Community-First AI Infrastructure Initiative provides a framework for doing exactly that. It is anchored in five commitments, each a clear promise to the communities where we build, own, and operate Microsoft datacenters. These are:
We’ll pay our way to ensure our datacenters don’t increase your electricity prices.
We’ll minimize our water use and replenish more of your water than we use.
We’ll create jobs for your residents.
We’ll add to the tax base for your local hospitals, schools, parks, and libraries.
We’ll strengthen your community by investing in local AI training and nonprofits.
We describe our plans in detail below. We recognize that these will evolve and improve, based most importantly on what we learn from ongoing engagement with local communities across the country. We’ll also follow this plan for Community-First AI Infrastructure with similar plans for other countries, shaped to reflect their local needs and traditions.
But we are choosing the beginning of 2026 in Washington, DC to launch this effort in the United States. Our goal is to move quickly, partner with local communities, and bring these commitments to life in the first half of this year.
1.Electricity: We’ll pay our way to ensure our datacenters don’t increase your electricity prices.
There’s no denying that AI consumes large amounts of electricity. While advances in technology may someday change this, today, this is the reality.
The United States will retain its AI leadership role only if AI infrastructure can tap into a rapidly growing supply of electricity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that US datacenter electricity demand will more than triple by 2035, growing from 200 terawatt-hours to 640 terawatt-hours per year. This growth is taking place alongside rapid electrification of manufacturing and other sectors of the economy.
Our nation is addressing this reality at a demanding time. Even in the absence of datacenter construction, the United States is facing major electricity challenges. Much of the country’s electricity transmission infrastructure is more than 40 years old, and it’s under strain. Supply chain constraints on transformers and high-voltage equipment are delaying upgrades that would enable existing lines to deliver more electricity. New transmission can take more than 7 to 10 years due to permitting and siting delays. This creates a mismatch with growing electricity demand.
Some have suggested that AI will be so beneficial that the public should help pay for the added electricity the country needs for it. We believe in the benefits AI will create, but we disagree with this approach. Especially when tech companies are so profitable, we believe that it’s both unfair and politically unrealistic for our industry to ask the public to shoulder added electricity costs for AI. Instead, we believe the long-term success of AI infrastructure requires that tech companies pay their own way for the electricity costs they create.
This will require that we take four steps, and we’re committed to each:
First, we’ll ask utilities and public commissions to set our rates high enough to cover the electricity costs for our datacenters. This includes the costs of adding and using the electricity infrastructure needed for the datacenters we build, own, and operate. We will work closely with utility companies that set electricity prices and state commissions that approve these prices. Our goal is straightforward: to ensure that the electricity cost of serving our datacenters is not passed on to residential customers.
In some areas, communities are already starting to benefit from this approach. In Wyoming, for example, Microsoft and Black Hills Energy have developed an innovative utility partnership that ensures our datacenter growth strengthens—rather than burdens—the local community. And as part of our datacenter investment in Wisconsin, we are supporting a new rate structure that would charge “Very Large Customers,” including datacenters, the cost of the electricity required to serve them. This protects residents by preventing those costs from being passed on. But we recognize the need to ensure that datacenter communities benefit everywhere. We believe this approach can and should be a model for other states.
Second, we’ll collaborate early, closely, and transparently with local utilities to add electricity and the supporting infrastructure to the grid when needed for our datacenters. Addressing electricity costs is critical, but it is an incomplete solution for local communities unless we expand electricity supply. This expansion typically requires a complex effort that includes the expansion of electrical generation capacity and improvements in transmission and substation systems.
We’re committed to collaborating with local utilities. We will sit down and plan together, providing early transparency around our projected power requirements and contracting in advance for the electricity we will use. When our datacenter expansion requires improvements in transmission and substation capabilities, we will continue our existing practices by paying for these improvements.
This work will build on a spirit of partnership with utilities we’ve worked to foster across the country. For example, in the wholesale energy market that covers much of the Midwest called the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), we have contracted to add 7.9 GW of new electricity generation to the grid, which is more than double our current consumption.
Third, we’ll pursue innovation to make our datacenters more efficient. We are also using AI to reduce energy use and improve the performance of our software and hardware in the design and management of our datacenters. And we are collaborating closely with utilities to leverage tools like AI to improve planning, get more electricity from existing lines and equipment, improve system resilience and durability, and speed the development of new infrastructure, including nuclear energy technologies.
By embedding these innovations into datacenters and by collaborating directly with local utilities, communities gain access to systems that are more efficient, more reliable, and better prepared to support growth without increasing costs for households.
Fourth, we’ll advocate for the state and national public policies needed to support our neighboring communities with affordable, reliable, and sustainable power. Public policy plays an essential role in supporting communities with affordable, reliable, and sustainable access to electricity. In 2022, Microsoft established priorities for electricity policy advocacy: expanding clean electricity generation, modernizing the grid, and engaging local communities. Over the past three years, we have advocated across all three areas and engaged with government leaders at the federal, state, and local levels to do so. To date, however, progress has been uneven. This needs to change.
We will advocate for policies across these areas with an urgent focus on accelerating project permitting and interconnection of electricity projects, expediting the planning and expansion of the electricity grid, and designing new electricity rates for large electricity users.
2. Water: We’ll minimize our water use and replenish more of your water than we use.
Across the country, communities are asking pointed questions about how datacenters use water. These are arising in places already facing water stress, like Phoenix and Atlanta, as well as regions with more abundant supply, like Wisconsin. These concerns are often amplified by aging municipal water systems and infrastructure gaps. Local communities want and deserve reassurance that new AI infrastructure won’t strain their water resources.
Our commitment ensures that our presence will strengthen local water systems rather than burden them. We’ll do this by reducing the amount of water we use and by investing in local water systems and water replenishment projects.
First, we’re committed to reducing the amount of water our datacenters use. The chips that power datacenters produce heat. To manage that heat, datacenters historically relied upon evaporative cooling systems that drew on large volumes of water for cooling in hot weather. As AI workloads have increased, the demand for cooling has increased. The GPU chips that power AI workloads run at very high temperatures; without proper cooling, these chips would burn out within minutes.
The good news is that the tech sector has invested in new innovations to address these cooling needs. Now is the time when we need to step up, use these new technologies, and take added steps to address water use concerns.
Across our entire owned fleet of datacenters, we are committed as a company to a 40 percent improvement in datacenter water-use intensity by 2030. We are optimizing water usage for cooling, improving our ability to balance between water-based cooling and air cooling based on environmental conditions. We have also launched a new AI datacenter design that uses a closed-loop system. By constantly recirculating a cooling liquid, we can dramatically cut our water usage. In this next-generation design, already deployed in locations such as Wisconsin and Georgia, potable water is no longer needed for cooling, reducing pressure on local freshwater systems.
For communities where water infrastructure constraints pose challenges, we will collaborate with local utilities to understand whether current systems can support the additional demand associated with datacenter growth. If sufficient capacity does not exist, we work with our engineering teams to identify solutions that avoid burdening the community.
This approach will build on what we’ve learned from the recent work at our datacenters in Quincy, Washington, an arid region where the local groundwater supply was already under pressure. To avoid drawing from the community’s potable water, we partnered with the city to construct the Quincy Water Reuse Utility, which treats and recirculates datacenter cooling water rather than relying on local groundwater. This approach protects limited drinking-water supplies while ensuring that high-quality, recycled water can be used for datacenter cooling needs. Where future system improvements are required, Microsoft funds those upgrades in full, ensuring that the community doesn’t have to shoulder the cost of supporting our operations.
We also partner with utilities from day one to map out water, wastewater, and pressure needs, and we fully fund the infrastructure required for growth, ensuring local water systems are resilient. Beyond our own footprint, we invest directly in community water infrastructure, modernizing water systems, expanding access, increasing water reliability, and helping utilities maintain stable rates and pressure. For example, near our datacenter in Leesburg, Virginia, Microsoft is funding more than $25 million of water and sewer improvements to ensure the cost of serving our facilities does not fall on local ratepayers.
Second, we will ensure that we replenish more water than we withdraw. This means restoring measurable amounts of water to the same water districts where our datacenter’s water is used, so the total water returned exceeds total water used. This standard provides greater transparency and precision in tracking and reporting, aligned with emerging industry standards.
We will pursue projects that make the most important water contribution to each local community. For example, in the greater Phoenix area and nearby Nevada communities, our leak detection partnerships with local utilities identify and repair hidden breaks in aging water systems, preventing water losses and keeping municipal water in circulation for community use. These projects both add to the total usable water supply and improve the reliability of service for residents.
Across the Midwest, we are restoring historic oxbow wetlands. These are crescent-shaped water bodies that naturally recharge groundwater, reduce flood risk, and enhance habitats for native species. These wetlands act as nature’s reservoirs, capturing and slowly returning water to local aquifers throughout both wet seasons and droughts, creating year-round value for farms, ecosystems, and nearby communities.
Overall, we approach replenishment the same way a household might think about a bank account: our operations make water withdrawals, and our replenishment projects make deposits. Some deposits, like our leak detection projects, go straight into the checking account—depositing water into the municipal supply for immediate community use. Others, like wetland restoration, go into a savings account—investing in the watershed’s long-term capacity to store and supply the region. These projects are evaluated using recognized methods that convert on-the-ground improvements into measurable gallons (or cubic meters) of water restored to local ecosystems, ensuring that commitments reflect tangible local benefits, not abstract promises.
Third, we will support this work with greater local transparency. People deserve to know how much water our datacenters use, and we are committed to making that information accessible, clear, and easy to understand. Aligned with this goal, we will begin publishing water-use data for each datacenter region in the country, as well as our progress on replenishment. This approach will ensure that communities can understand both our operational footprint and the progress we are making against our water-positive goals.
Fourth, we will advocate for public policies to help minimize water use and strengthen resilience. This means championing policies that enable sustainable growth while safeguarding community resources. We will support state and federal efforts to make reclaimed and industrial recycled water the default supply for datacenters wherever feasible. We will advocate for harmonized transparency standards that allow communities to clearly understand water use and stewardship practices. And we will work to reduce permitting delays by promoting predictable pathways for water-efficient datacenter projects.
These actions reflect our belief that technology and environmental responsibility must advance together, ensuring that AI-driven progress aligns with long-term water resilience for people, places, and ecosystems. Our policy activities are rooted in protecting local communities. By prioritizing recycled water and efficiency, we will help reduce pressure on aging municipal systems and ensure reliable water access for people and businesses.
3.We’ll create jobs for your residents.
New datacenters create jobs—typically thousands during construction and hundreds during operations. For example, in Washington state more than 1,300 skilled trades workers are building Microsoft datacenters and by the end of next year more than 650 full-time employees and contractors will work across all our operational facilities there.
One of our goals is to help ensure that workers from the local community benefit from these opportunities. To achieve this, we will invest in new partnerships to help give local residents the skills and opportunities to fill these jobs in both the construction and operational phases.
The AI infrastructure construction boom is driving large-scale physical development, creating a huge demand for skilled tradespeople nationwide. As datacenters and the energy projects that support them grow quickly, firms are vying for a limited workforce. At one level, this is good news for people who already have the qualifications these jobs require. But at another level, there is a risk the jobs will not go to local residents who want to pursue these jobs unless they can acquire the skills required.
We will take a multifaceted approach.
First, we will invest in partnerships to help train local workers to support the construction and maintenance of datacenters. This includes a new and first-of-its-kind partnership between Microsoft and North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) to strengthen apprenticeship and training programs in the skilled trades where datacenters are being built. We are launching today a new agreement that establishes a cooperative framework to focus on building a pipeline of skilled workers in regions where we are building datacenters. This will also help enable NABTU to identify qualified contractor partners to bid on our infrastructure projects.
Second, we will expand our Datacenter Academy program to train individuals to fill ongoing datacenter operations roles. This program works in partnership with local community colleges and vocational schools to train students for critical roles in datacenter operations and related careers, once construction is complete.
A good example of this work is our Datacenter Academy partnerships in Boydton, Virginia, where we have a large datacenter campus. The Academy works with Southside Virginia Community College and the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center, which have helped hundreds of students and adult learners earn industry-recognized certifications in information technology and critical facilities operations.
In 2024, this work expanded with the opening of a new Critical Environment Training Lab (SoVA) in South Hill. This provides hands-on training with electrical, mechanical, and cooling systems using decommissioned datacenter equipment donated by Microsoft. Graduates of these programs have gone on to pursue careers supporting datacenter operations in Southern Virginia, including roles with Microsoft and the broader ecosystem of companies that help operate and maintain digital infrastructure. We will pursue similar partnerships in other states, and we are committed to making this an ongoing part of our work in the communities where we build new datacenters.
Third, we will use our voice to encourage policymakers to support these new job opportunities. While this work is of heightened importance in communities with datacenters, the broader need for this type of skilled labor is national in scope. According to LinkedIn data, job postings for data center occupations or requiring at least one core data center skill, such as data center operations, grew by 23 percent globally and 13.5 percent in the US year-over-year in 2025. This is likely to represent an ongoing trend. Over the next decade, trillions in private investment will offer steady employment opportunities for American workers—including electricians, pipefitters, HVAC techs, welders, and construction crews—alongside manufacturing technicians for related components, like chips, power generation, and cooling systems.
However, this rapid demand for skilled labor is set to outpace the available pipeline of workers. Today, the Associated Builders and Contractors estimates that the construction industry is short roughly 439,000 workers, mostly among skilled workers who do things like lay pipe and wire electrical panels.[1] Manufacturers report shortages as well, with the CEO of Ford Motor Company recently highlighting 5,000 open mechanic jobs that pay more than $100,000 per year. And for datacenter operations, employers face shortages in hands-on infrastructure skills such as cabling, racking, and network hardware.
This problem is exacerbated by the demographics of an aging workforce and a decades-old policy trend of deprioritizing vocational education for young Americans. A generation of skilled workers, vocationally trained in high schools and apprenticeships in the 20th century, are retiring from the trades. In the first quarter-century of the 21st century, high schools pivoted towards preparing young people for higher education and advanced degrees, often at the expense of traditional shop classes and training in skilled craftsmanship.
The increased demand for skilled trades, paired with an aging workforce, requires an enhanced public-private workforce partnership. Secondary schools in the US can be incentivized to do more to educate young people about the trades through vocational schools and pre-apprenticeship programs. Registered apprenticeship programs offered nationally provide a fulfilling career path with long-term wages and benefits.
In partnership with labor, the federal government can champion a national apprenticeship and workforce development initiative that helps young and aspiring American workers near AI infrastructure projects, especially in rural and post-industrial regions. President Trump’s AI Action Plan rightly identifies this opportunity, and we will work closely with the Department of Labor to help scale this effort. The federal government can also help by streamlining the process by which businesses can establish and maintain a registered apprenticeship program. They can also maximize the use of existing federal dollars that directly support registered apprenticeship programs. This could entail modernizing the regulations for the National Apprenticeship Act or updating the statutory language itself.
4.We will add to the tax base for your local hospitals, schools, parks, and libraries.
One of the most tangible benefits from datacenter development is invisible to an individual driving nearby. It’s the property taxes paid by datacenters to the local municipality, which are substantial. But this too requires that the private sector take a responsible approach, as described below.
We won’t ask local municipalities to reduce their local property tax rates when we buy land or propose a datacenter presence. Instead, we’ll pay our full and fair share of local property taxes, adding revenue to local towns and cities. This is obviously critical to supporting the growth a local community often experiences when datacenters are built or expanded. And most importantly, at a time when many communities are facing revenue shortages that threaten vital public assets like hospitals, schools, parks, and libraries, we know from experience that this can make a big difference.
The benefits of this approach are nowhere more apparent than in Quincy, Washington, a small agricultural community about 150 miles east of Seattle where Microsoft built its first datacenter in 2008. Since then, we have built more than twenty datacenters in the area, providing ongoing employment to thousands of construction workers for almost two decades. Hundreds of technicians enjoy permanent jobs in those datacenters, earning salaries well above the median income for Quincy. And we estimate that for every direct construction job created, another one is created in related sectors, including security services, maintenance and repair, retail, restaurants, and more. Altogether, our datacenters drive more than $200 million in regional economic activity each year.
As a result, the share of Quincy residents living below the poverty line has been cut in half, dropping from 29.4 percent in 2013 to 13.1 percent in 2023. And county property tax revenues have more than tripled over the past two decades, from roughly $60 million to more than $180 million. This has enabled the city to invest in public services and amenities. Last year, as rural hospitals around the country cut back on critical care offerings and shuttered their doors, Quincy opened a new 54,000-square-foot medical center. The city has also made substantial renovations to its high school, adding state-of-the-art athletic facilities, an auditorium, and a career and technical training department.
We want to make sure that the other communities where our datacenters are located benefit from our presence in the same way. In all the regions where we build, own, and operate datacenters, we’re devoted to taking a civically responsible approach. This means recognizing the importance of civic services, including public safety, local healthcare, schools, libraries, and parks. As we become an important local employer, local communities can count on us to be a constructive contributor to local business and civic efforts.
5. We’ll strengthen your community by investing in local AI training and nonprofits.
We believe the datacenter communities that power AI should be among the first to benefit from it. As these communities help drive innovation and economic growth for the nation, it’s essential that they share in the economic, educational, and community benefits AI is creating. Especially as jobs evolve and require more AI skills, this requires local investments in AI education and training. To support this goal, we will provide free, age-appropriate, best-in-class AI training and education in these communities in partnership with trusted, local community-based organizations.
For years, we have been helping people gain essential digital skills in communities in and around our datacenters, such as Quincy in Eastern Washington, Boydton in Southern Virginia, and Mt. Pleasant in Southeast Wisconsin. One thing we’ve learned is that these communities have vibrant anchor institutions—schools, libraries, and local chambers of commerce—that form the backbone of local learning, workforce development, and economic growth. That’s why our approach as we go forward will be to invest in communities with our datacenters to partner with and provide support to these anchor institutions so that every community member can leverage the power of AI in how they live, work, and learn.
First, we will partner with local K-12 schools, community colleges, and universities to provide age-appropriate, responsible AI literacy training and learning experiences for students and teachers in our datacenter communities. This will build on some of our most recent experiences. For example, in Quincy, Washington, we partnered with Quincy High School and the local FFA chapter to teach students the critical AI and data skills needed for careers in precision agriculture. And in our datacenter region in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, we recently launched an AI bootcamp for students and faculty with Gateway Technical College to cultivate a new generation of developers and creators of AI tools and technology across Wisconsin technical colleges.
Our commitment is to build on this work to help students and teachers responsibly and effectively engage with AI, create with AI, manage AI, and design with AI by bringing free, locally relevant, responsible AI training that is aligned with AI literacy standards to students in every K-12 school, community college, and university in our datacenter markets.
Second, we will support adults in our datacenter communities with AI tools and skills by creating neighborhood AI learning hubs in partnership with local libraries in our key datacenter markets. This approach will build upon our previous digital skilling partnerships with local libraries. For example, during COVID, we partnered with libraries in rural communities across the country, and more recently, we helped train libraries in our Quincy and Mt. Pleasant datacenter markets on AI so that they could help their patrons learn AI skills. Building on this work, we will invest in AI literacy skills development for librarians and provide access to free AI literacy training and certifications to local library patrons, including by equipping public terminals at local libraries in our datacenter regions with AI tools and services.
Third, we will support AI skills training for small businesses. We recognize that AI training will be critical for small businesses as they navigate the transition to the AI economy. These businesses are the backbone of local economies, and their success directly impacts job creation, workforce stability, and community vitality. Through a new workforce transformation initiative, we will deliver AI training, tools, and insights to local chambers of commerce that support these small businesses. We will also provide flexible grants for AI training and upskilling to local chambers of commerce and a variety of workforce organizations to help local businesses upskill employees, adopt AI responsibly, and prepare their workforce for ongoing transformation—ensuring that economic opportunity stays rooted in the communities where we build and operate datacenters.
Finally, we will invest in your local nonprofit community. A defining aspect of Microsoft’s own history and culture has long been a commitment to support the many nonprofit organizations that are vital to every community the company calls home. As we expand our datacenters in new communities, we’re committed to bringing this role to these new regions.
This starts with support for our employees in the local community. We provide two key benefits to all our full-time employees. First, we will match every hour they spend volunteering for a nonprofit with a donation to that group of $25. Second, we’ll match each dollar they donate to a nonprofit with an equal donation by Microsoft. These give all our employees, including in our datacenters, a total potential match of $15,000 each year.
This approach to community engagement is an important part of Microsoft’s culture, and it has become the largest nonprofit charitable matching program in the history of business. In 2024 in the United States, it raised $229.1 million in donations for 29,000 nonprofits, plus 964,000 volunteer hours contributed by our employees. It’s a part of Microsoft we’re excited to bring to the communities that have our datacenters.
We recognize that our support for the local community also needs to go beyond this type of program. Our broader contribution must start with listening. You know best what your town needs, what nonprofits are making a difference, and which organizations are best positioned to do more. We will provide locally based Microsoft liaisons in major US datacenter communities to work side by side with local leaders and nonprofits. Our local staff will provide a community connection to our various Microsoft teams and resources. Working together, we will shape our direction and connection to help further our support for local nonprofits.
Conclusion
Many lessons emerge from the nation’s 250-year history relating to technology and infrastructure. The first is that large-scale infrastructure expansion is vital to economic growth and everyday improvements in people’s lives. Our lives today rely on electrical appliances, automobiles, phones, airplanes, and much more that would be impossible without modern infrastructure.
But a second lesson illustrates an important tension. Major infrastructure expansion is always difficult. It’s expensive. It inevitably raises questions, concerns, and even controversies. This has been true for more than 200 years, and we should assume it will be true well into the future. This always requires that important decisions be made by government leaders from village presidents and town councils to the American President and Congress.
Third, the most important decisions are often made at the local level. This reflects the outsized impact—both positive and negative—of infrastructure expansion at the local level. It also reflects the American political tradition and our zoning and permitting laws, which rightly put decision-making authority closest to those elected to serve local communities.
There’s a final lesson that speaks most directly to us. Private companies can help by stepping up and acting in a responsible way. We cannot surmount inevitable community challenges by ourselves. But we can make everything easier by embracing a long-term vision. By recognizing our responsibility. By playing a constructive role. And by supporting the entire community.
As we look to the future, we are committing to taking this final lesson to heart. And making it a fundamental part of our efforts every day.
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