How AI changes the math for startups, according to a Microsoft VP

For 24 years, Microsoft’s Amanda Silver has been working to help developers — and in the last few years, that’s meant building tools for AI. After a long stretch on GitHub Copilot, Silver is now a corporate vice president at Microsoft’s CoreAI division, where she works on tools for deploying apps and agentic systems within enterprises. Her work is focused on the Foundry system inside Azure, which is designed as a unified AI portal for enterprises, giving her a close view of how companies are actually using these systems and where deployments end up falling short.

I spoke with Silver about the current capabilities of enterprise agents, and why she believes this is the biggest opportunity for startups since the public cloud.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

So, your work focuses on Microsoft products for outside developers – often startups that aren’t otherwise focused…