

But this only happens automatically during the Out of the Box Experience. If you’re using a subscription activation Windows license (Windows E3/ E5 license), subscription activation should automatically pull the firmware embedded activation key and activate the underlying pro license.

An option is to activate Windows with the firmware embedded product key, which is available on most (business) laptops. You could end up with devices, which still try to activate Windows after a factory reset by reaching out to a KMS server that is not reachable. But when you migrate these devices to Azure AD only joined devices, these devices might not have direct access to the on-premises environment anymore.

Windows devices that are Active Directory joined (or Hybrid Azure Active Directory joined), might be activated by using an on-premises KMS server, which has been (and still is) perfectly fine.
