Megan Berry

When a technology company announces that it's secured hundreds of megawatts of electricity for its AI data centres, it's easy to assume that another major infrastructure problem has been solved. After all, the company has found a power supplier, signed an agreement and secured what sounds like an enormous amount of electricity. Surely that means it's ready to start building? Well, not necessarily.

Enterprise technology strategy has always involved a fairly familiar set of decisions. Businesses decide what technology they need, whether to build it themselves or buy it from someone else, and how they'll manage it once it's in place. Some systems become company assets, while others are accessed through licences, subscriptions or supplier agreements. It's an approach that makes sense.

Microsoft is changing how autonomous AI agents operate on Windows, introducing new security controls designed to stop them from accessing files, applications and other resources without permission. Announced at a Microsoft and Nvidia event in San Francisco on 7 October 2026, the changes centre on Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), a technology that allows AI agents to work inside restricted environments rather than automatically sharing a user's access to their computer.