Microsoft Elevates Rust to Tier-1 Language, Unifies Rust and C++ Development on Windows

Microsoft has elevated Rust to a “Tier-1 language” for internal development, putting it alongside C++, C# and TypeScript as one of the company’s best-supported programming languages.

The move is part of Microsoft’s broader effort to expand Rust across its software stack, including firmware, drivers, kernels, hypervisors, microservices and applications.

Microsoft’s New AI Tool Targets the Pain of Moving Off Salesforce

Support for other customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and enterprise resource planning (ERP) migration scenarios is planned for later.

The Left ShiftThe Left Shift Bureau

The company says the Tier-1 status provides internal teams with a supported path from development to production, including secure toolchains, developer tooling, quality workflows, platform integration and compliance with Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle.

A key part of the initiative is rustc_codegen_utc, a new code-generation backend that connects Rust’s compiler, rustc, with Microsoft’s native MSVC backend.

“MSVC is the native platform compiler for Windows, and Rust needs to participate fully in that ecosystem as its usage grows across Microsoft,” Victor Ciura, principal engineer on Microsoft’s Rust tooling team, wrote in a company blog post.

The integration is designed to give Rust access to capabilities already developed for the Windows and MSVC ecosystem, including binary hardening, security features, post-link analysis, debugging, crash-dump analysis, profiling and optimization.

Microsoft said the approach will also strengthen interoperability between Rust and C++, an increasingly important requirement as its engineering teams adopt both languages for native software.

“Connecting rustc to that backend lets Rust build on the same platform investment, with perfect compatibility out of the box, rather than requiring a parallel implementation of every Windows-specific capability,” Ciura said.

The backend has been production-ready since early 2026 and has been self-hosted since Rust 1.90. More than 100 Microsoft project repositories are currently building with it, with adoption continuing across the company.

Microsoft’s broader Rust “paved path” includes secure supply-chain builds of the compiler and standard library, integration with development and production pipelines, and common security, quality and compliance workflows.

Okta Targets Agentic Commerce With New Identity Tools for B2C and B2B

For B2B companies, Okta is adding capabilities to simplify multi-tenancy, speed up customer onboarding and bring enterprise-grade identity features to existing technology stacks.

The Left ShiftThe Left Shift Bureau

Salesforce Unveils Enterprise AI Harness as AI Agents Spread Across the Enterprise

The architecture is designed to connect AI agents with enterprise data, workflows, policies and applications without requiring companies to build separate infrastructure for every agent or AI application.

The Left ShiftThe Left Shift Bureau