Microsoft Makes Copilot 4 Times Faster While Cutting Token Usage by 30%

Microsoft has introduced a new SharePoint knowledge base feature that promises to make Copilot and AI agents up to four times faster while consuming 30% fewer tokens.

Instead of relying on more powerful AI models, Microsoft aims to improve performance by changing how AI agents organize and retrieve company information.

The feature uses Microsoft’s Work IQ knowledge compilation engine to transform scattered business data into structured knowledge that employees and AI agents can access more efficiently.

How SharePoint knowledge bases improve Copilot performance

Microsoft’s new knowledge bases bring together information from emails, Teams conversations, meeting notes, technical documents, and existing SharePoint sites.

The system organizes this information into interconnected Markdown files, allowing AI agents to find relevant details without repeatedly searching through multiple documents.

Employees and AI agents can access the same shared knowledge base, creating a centralized source of information that teams can maintain and reuse.

According to Microsoft, this approach can deliver AI responses up to four times faster while reducing token consumption by 30%.

The company also reports improvements in response quality, particularly when users ask complex questions that require information from several documents.

These performance gains come from reducing the amount of information AI agents need to retrieve and process, rather than increasing the capabilities of the underlying language model.

Availability and upcoming integrations

Microsoft has started rolling out SharePoint knowledge bases to organizations participating in its Frontier preview program.

For now, the preview requires usage-based billing, limiting access to eligible organizations.

Companies can add knowledge bases to existing SharePoint sites, including those connected to Microsoft Teams channels and Microsoft 365 Groups.

Microsoft also plans to bring the capability to Copilot Studio agents and additional Microsoft 365 experiences, potentially extending the performance improvements across its AI ecosystem.

The announcement follows several other Copilot developments. Microsoft’s recent Copilot Notebooks update introduced Office editing, AI automations, and interactive reports.

The company is also retiring two Power Apps tools in favor of Copilot and has introduced five new Copilot features for Excel, continuing its push to integrate AI more deeply into Microsoft 365.