How to watch the Microsoft Build 2024 keynote live on May 21

Spring means it’s prime season in the tech world, and in 2024, that means “time to show off your AI bonafides.” Google and OpenAI have already revealed major new upgrades to Gemini and ChatGPT this month, and now it’s time for Microsoft Build. The tech giant’s annual developer conference kicks off with a keynote scheduled for Tuesday, May 21 at 12:00 PM ET/9:00 AM PT, and you can watch the entire event live YouTube (which is also embedded below) and c Microsoft site (registration required). What about that Microsoft Surface event you might have heard about? Well, it’s actually happening a day earlier: Monday, May 20. Are you confused? Don’t worry, here’s the tl;dr version of what to expect, summarized from our more in-depth What to expect from Microsoft Build 2024: The Surface, Windows 11 and AI event.

Expected new Microsoft Surface products: Monday, May 20

A day before the official Build keynote, Microsoft is hosting a more intimate event for journalists where it plans to unveil its “AI vision for hardware and software.” This event will not be streamed live, but Engadget will have full coverage as it unfolds.

Rumors strongly suggest we’ll see new consumer-focused Surface PCs. And unlike enterprise-oriented models like the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 introduced in March, these new models may be powered by updated Qualcomm Snapdragon chips — Arm chips that run cooler and offer much better battery life than their Intel and AMD equivalents, but often at the expense of reduced application compatibility and processing speeds.

Microsoft Build Keynote: Tuesday, May 21

The thinking is that Microsoft is following the template its fellow tech giants have demonstrated this season: get the hardware announcements out of the way first, clearing the runway for an all-AI presentation at the developer conference. That’s what happened with Apple and Google in recent weeks, as they respectively unveiled new iPads weeks before June’s WWDC event and a new Pixel 8a phone in the days leading up to Google I/O.

What does this mean for Tuesday? Last year’s Build announcements give you the general flavor: Microsoft’s Copilot AI (possibly with more impressive intelligence powered by OpenAI) integrated into even more of Microsoft’s DNA, likely both at the device level (Windows) and down to the massive cloud infrastructure of the company.

While much of Tuesday’s news will be through the lens of Microsoft’s developer community, we’re looking forward to giving you the big picture of what this all means for end users — and how it stacks up against the hardware announcements we expect to see in Monday. Stay on the line.

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