Weekly Update 12 January 2026 – Welcome to 2026, Where are all the stories, Building AI Org Muscle, Copilot Checkout

This week:
Welcome to 2026, A Growth Year for All of Us

Where are all the news stories?! (A discussion about a quiet start to 2026)

How to build the organizational muscle needed to scale AI beyond PoCs

Microsoft and PayPal’s Copilot Checkout allows users to make purchases without leaving the AI chatbot

You can also listen to the audio-only version: Thoughtstuff Podcast – Tom Morgan on Teams Dev: Weekly Update 12 January 2026.

Find all my videos at thoughtstuff.co.uk/videos. You can also subscribe to the audio-only version of these videos, either via iTunes, Spotify or your own podcasting tool.

Transcript (AI-Generated)

Hello and welcome to another weekly update. I hope you’re doing well. Welcome to 2026 – this is the first one of the new year!

I didn’t do one last week, and I’ll explain why in a bit. I want to begin where I intended to start, and then take a slightly different path.

Developers Staying Busy Over The Holidays

The first blog post that caught my eye was from the Visual Studio team. It was their “Welcome to 2026” post, and what struck me was the tone. You’d think people slow down coming into Christmas, but according to their watch statistics—from sessions at VS Live Orlando—it looks like developers kept going strong. Lots of interest in learning Visual Studio, AI tools, and what’s coming in 2026.

The top six ranked sessions were deeply technical, not just overviews, which suggests developers are really leaning in and being intentional with their time. That mirrors what I felt too—no slowing down, just keeping up and catching up.

The blog’s main purpose was also to highlight upcoming in-person Visual Studio Live events in 2026, so check those out if you’re interested.

Radio Silence from Microsoft 365 Dev

I was surprised, however, when preparing this week’s update. I regularly go through a set of RSS feeds and key web pages related to Microsoft 365 dev, extensibility, and Co-pilot updates. Usually, there’s plenty to talk about, even if I step slightly outside the core M365 dev scope.

This time? Silence. Since mid-December, just before Christmas, there’s been almost nothing. RSS feeds were empty. That’s actually why I didn’t release an update last week.

I don’t think it’s because there’s nothing to do—far from it. My guess is a combination of internal changes, budget calendar impacts, or teams needing time to reboot communications after planning through to year-end. That said, I’ve done a bunch of Christmases now, and I don’t recall ever having a content drought quite this long into the new year.

Scaling AI Within Organizations – A ThoughtWorks Perspective

The quiet push me to look elsewhere, and I landed on a ThoughtWorks article: “How to build the organizational muscle needed to scale AI beyond POCs”. It’s exactly the right conversation a lot of us need to have.

If you’ve done any AI development, you know the pattern: you build a proof of concept, people are interested… and then things fizzle. This piece explores how to keep momentum—how to get organizations to internalize and embed AI into their workflows. It’s a comprehensive read, full of references, diagrams, and practical suggestions. Highly recommended.

Copilot Checkout with PayPal

Another headline I almost missed: Microsoft is working on “Copilot Checkout” via PayPal, now in public preview. This one flew under the radar—I found it on a Windows Central blog.

While details are sparse, it seems we’ll see native “buy buttons” inside the Copilot chat experience (probably the web-based version). It won’t make purchases for you, but it will present buying options and redirect to PayPal for completion.

What’s really intriguing is the potential for developer extensibility. Will this be open to ISVs, or limited to select partners? Will there be an equivalent for Microsoft 365 Copilot that also handles enterprise procurement use cases through internal workflows? Lots of possibilities if they get the model right.

And it ties back to the ThoughtWorks piece: shaping organizational adoption habits. Embedding purchasing flows into chat may help normalize AI-driven decisions and actions inside businesses too.

Wrapping Up

So, even in a relatively quiet week for Microsoft news, there are still valuable threads to pull—from developer learning trends, to organizational AI adoption, and the quiet beginnings of commerce integrations inside Copilot.

Let’s see what the next week brings. Have a good one—whatever you’re working on. I’ll see you again next week!