Microsoft is working on a major upgrade to its flagship software development product, Visual Studio, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.
Microsoft has a free open source code editor called VS Code, which rivals such as Amazon and Windsurf used to build competing developer tools.
Visual Studio, on the other hand, is a paid integrated development environment or IDE that provides more functionality to help developers write, debug, edit, deploy and manage their entire project.
Jay Parikh is a relatively new executive who leads Microsoft's Coreai organization that oversees developer tools, including Visual Studio. Parif emailed his team in April to explain plans for the “next major release” of the product. Business Insider saw a copy of the note.
The last major upgrade to Visual Studio was released in 2021. Microsoft has already been working on this new version for a while. According to the memo, the company has launched “early DogFooding.”
Parif did not disclose the timeline for the release, but Microsoft's blog dropped the hint earlier this year. “Learn more about what's next for the visual studio later this summer,” the post said.
According to those familiar with planning, the new Visual Studio will be packed with AI features.
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According to data cited in a recent note from Barclays, Github Copilot, the AI coding assistant at Microsoft, recently lost its share to Cursor in a key part of the developer market.
Amazon has launched its own IDE called Kiro. Business Insider reported earlier this year that Amazon designed it to utilize Kiro AI Agent Analyze user prompts and existing data and generate code in “close real-time”.
Microsoft said it is offering regular updates to Visual Studio for the current version of version 17 (not version 18 that Parif described in his notes).
For example, in July, the company rolled out REVAMP 17.14.9, which added new AI features such as MCP that help models connect with external data sources, such as support for the latest models of humanity and updates to model context protocols.
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