By Kasturi Datta |
Microsoft is investing US$2.5 billion into a new business called Microsoft Frontier Company. The new venture will assist clients with AI implementations.
The software vendor says that it plans to embed 6,000 of its industry experts across customer organisations, in a practice known as forward-deployed engineering (FDE).
Microsoft’s employees will co-design, co-innovate and assist with the deployment and continuous improvement of AI systems.
LSEG, a provider of financial markets infrastructure, has demonstrated early results of Microsoft Frontier Company’s work by implementing AI into its workspace. Financial professionals can ask complex questions and receive quick responses across both structure and unstructured content.
“The solution is underpinned by a foundation that is iteratively refined through client feedback and real-time user testing that accelerates each cycle and steadily improves model quality and scope,” said Judson Althoff, CEO of commercial business at Microsoft. “From LSEG to Land O’Lakes to Unilever to Novo Nordisk, our differentiated approach is already delivering measurable outcomes on our customers’ Frontier Transformation journeys.”
Microsoft also has FDE partnerships with Accenture, EY, KPMG, PwC and Capgemini.
“Companies need to establish an intelligence platform so their unique IQ – their proprietary data, expertise, workflows and decision-making processes – compounds over time from within, using their choice of models to build AI solutions and workflows,” said Althoff. “They need a trusted platform that allows them to observe, govern, manage and secure AI solutions across every layer of the technology stack, using FinOps to assess their return on investment.
“Enterprise AI engineering expertise with deep industry knowledge is required to build a system that acts as a continuous loop of improvement between the two platforms to fine tune agentic business processes, ensuring that a customer’s intelligence compounds over time and delivers real business outcomes.”