Why Microsoft chose OpenClaw to build Scout – its first agentic AI offering
At the Microsoft Build 2026 event, the company unveiled Scout as its first agentic AI offering — an always-on, proactive personal work agent that lives inside Microsoft 365 apps like Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint. While the world immediately drew parallels to Peter Steinberger’s OpenClaw, on which it is based, there was a larger question looming on the pathways of the internet forum – why did Microsoft choose OpenClaw rather than build something of its own, in the usual Microsoft way? Why did Microsoft choose to rely on open-source software for what it believes is its next big thing?
