Frank Carr
Microsoft is betting that enterprise customers need more than software licenses to make artificial intelligence actually work. On Thursday the company launched Microsoft Frontier Company, a new operating unit backed by $2.5 billion and staffed with 6,000 employees whose job is to sit inside client organizations and help them design, deploy and refine AI systems from the ground up.
What Microsoft Frontier Company Actually Does
Most of the 6,000 people joining the unit already work at Microsoft. The company is pulling industry specialists, engineers and AI professionals out of its existing forward deployed and engineering teams and consolidating them under one roof, with plans to grow the group further through internal transfers and outside hiring. Rodrigo Kede Lima, who previously ran Microsoft's business in Asia, will lead the new division as its president.
The approach itself, known as forward deployed engineering, means sending a company's own technical staff to embed inside a customer's operation rather than just handing over a license and walking away. It has quickly become one of the sharpest points of competition in enterprise AI. Anthropic and OpenAI both rolled out similar programs in May, according to GeekWire, and Amazon committed $1 billion to a comparable effort just two days before Microsoft's announcement.
The Pitch to Wary Enterprise Buyers
Judson Althoff, who runs Microsoft's commercial business as CEO, described a common problem among corporate clients trying to figure out where to even start.
Connor Simmons
Chris Wood
Sarah Ross