• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 10, 2017

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made it clear on Wednesday at the Build 2017 developers conference that the company's cloud-based global growth strategy and support for developers will be based on artificial intelligence for years to come.

The company plans to make AI mainstream through a variety of tools and products from search to cloud services and XBox. Nadella highlighted Azure cloud services as one of the projects. The company has made AI and Internet-based computing key areas of investment in order to go up against rivals such as Amazon, Google, Facebook and others.

Nadella also cited growth milestones such as 500 million monthly active Windows 10 users, 100 million commercial users of Office 365, and 140 million monthly active users of Cortana, of which the majority are on the desktop. He also cited the need to build trust in technology, saying that new applications must avoid unpleasant futures that some feature.

Harry Shum, EVP of artificial intelligence and research at Microsoft, made it clear on Wednesday that AI would integrate into every tool for developers and products offered in the future.

Shum, known for the development of the Bing search engine, has spearheaded many of the AI efforts behind Microsoft.

Microsoft also said it signed an agreement with Intel to create reference designs for companies wanting to integrate Cortana.