The essential Elastic 2026 wrap-up for Microsoft Build attendees and Azure developers

Elastic’s 2026 releases include multimodal search via the Elastic Inference Service supporting text, images, video, and audio across 100 languages, along with a rebuilt OpenTelemetry metrics engine storing data at 3.75 bytes per data point and querying 160x faster. Elastic 9.4’s Agent Builder shipped with skills, native Microsoft 365 connectors for SharePoint and Drive, and context management at scale. GPU-accelerated indexing via NVIDIA cuVS delivers a 12x improvement in indexing throughput, while open-source CI/CD pipeline security detects GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps attacks before they reach production.