loading . . . Stevie Bathiche on AI Agents, NPUs, and the Future (Premium) No one explains AI as clearly as Microsoft technical fellow Stevie Bathiche, so I was delighted to see him again this week at the Snapdragon Summit 2025 in Maui. He appeared in Qualcomm’s product announcement keynote, but I was also part of a small group that was able to pepper him with questions later that day. And you won’t be surprised to know that I asked him about my favorite AI topic, orchestration.
If you’re not familiar with Stevie, he’s one of the good guys. He’s one of the nicest and smartest people I’ve ever met at Microsoft, but I love his ability to communicate complicated topics in a straightforward manner. His explanations of AI app models and why the NPU matters so much are required watching/reading. So let’s start there.
🧞 2023: AI application structures
At Build 2023, Stevie gave one of the greatest talks I’ve ever witnessed. It’s so good that I’ve referenced it repeatedly. He explained that AI capabilities would roll out over time using three application structures:
Beside applications. In this structure, you use AI next to existing (legacy) apps, as is the case with Copilot alongside, say, Microsoft Word and Edge. Basically a sort of sidebar, but literally a copilot.
Inside applications. Here, AI is embedded in a new app (or a thoroughly overhauled existing app), resulting in simpler user interfaces without any loss of capabilities. He cited Clipchamp and Designer as examples.
Outside applications. In this structure, AI capabilities are exposed as agents (services) that are controlled by an orchestrator. This orchestrator will evaluate user questions and commands and then determine which combination of AI models, apps, services, or whatever else can get it done. “It’s like a Copilot of Copilots,” he said, “a very powerful application structure.”
At the time of this talk, Microsoft was busy rolling out besides applications n the form of what’s now called Microsoft 365 Copilot and the Copilot sidebar in Edge, and it had announced that Copilot would come to Windows 11 later that year, and the initial release was literally a sidebar. And Clipchamp and Designer obviously existed too, so we had some basic inside applications to experience.
Outside applications are also happening now as Agentic AI, but over a longer period of time as capabilities are built out. That this is happening first in standalone applications—Perplexity Comet, an AI-powered web browser, is a good example, but you can also kick off these activities from any AI chat interface and so on—may seem ironic, but that’s how these transitions occur.
The end game here is more ambient, with natural language interactions, and spread across multiple devices that will include wearables like glasses, rings, smartwatches, and so on, smart home devices, PCs, phones, and tablets, and whatever else. Meaning that instead of running an app on a particular platform, one will have access to these agentic capabil...
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