Microsoft will allow businesses to start making their own autonomous artificial intelligence agents starting next month, taking the fight back to Salesforce, which introduced its own configurable agentic AI tools in September.

The AI tools, some acting autonomously and others in concert with a worker, can complete tasks like researching and sorting through sales leads or updating a customer support ticket after a phone call.

Microsoft, under CEO Satya Nadella, is adding new AI capabilities including AI agents that can complete tasks and oversee business processes autonomously.