Microsoft 365 Copilot Adds Two Reasoning Agents for Work

Microsoft introduced two new AI reasoning agents yesterday that will soon be available for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers. These two new reasoning agents, Researcher and Analyst, leverage OpenAI technology to perform multi-step research and complex data analysis independently.

Researcher can combine an organization’s data with external sources, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Confluence, and more. It can also pull data from other Microsoft 365 Copilot agents, such as Microsoft’s new sales agent announced earlier this month.

“You can use Researcher to build a detailed go-to-market strategy based on the context of all your work data and broader competitive data from the web; identify whitespace opportunities for a new product based on emerging trends and internal data; or create a comprehensive quarterly report for a client review detailing work to date along with the latest market analysis,” Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work wrote.

Analyst, the second research agent Microsoft announced yesterday, uses OpenAI’s o3-mini reasoning model, and it can run Python code in real time to answer complex data queries. “For example, you can use Analyst to turn raw data scattered across multiple spreadsheets into a demand forecast for a new product, a visualization of customer purchasing patterns, or a revenue projection,” Spataro said about the research agent.

Organizations with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will get access to Researcher and Analyst next month through a new “Frontier” program for early Copilot innovations. In addition to these new reasoning agents created by Microsoft, organizations will also be able to create custom agents with deep reasoning capabilities in Microsoft Copilot Studio, the company’s online hub for building agents using low code and generative AI.

Microsoft timed these latest Copilot announcements right after Google announced a first Gemini 2.5 model and OpenAI added image creation capabilities to ChatGPT. Earlier this week, the Redmond giant also announced the upcoming launch of new Security Copilot agents.