The pace of AI adoption is moving incredibly quickly. Customers have moved beyond experimentation and realized the importance of adopting AI to transform their business. They are now focused on delivering measurable business results and demonstrating a return on their AI investments, while ensuring their intelligence is expanded and their intellectual property is protected.
Today we introduce Microsoft Frontier Companya new operating company focused on delivering Frontier Transformation through AI to our customers around the world. It offers a unique combination of skills including deep industry knowledge, experience in change management and continuous improvement, and enterprise-grade AI engineering expertise. This goes beyond what is referred to as Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) and will be the largest, most capable and results-driven engineering organization in the industry. We are making a $2.5 billion investment in Microsoft Frontier Company, engaging 6,000 industry and technical experts at customers to co-design, co-innovate, deploy and continually improve AI systems at scale based on measurable business outcomes.
Recently, I wrote more about my belief that intelligence and trust are the two most important components of any AI solution and how our customers can use various levers to control costs.
Companies need to establish an intelligence platform so that their unique IQ – their proprietary data, expertise, workflows and decision-making processes – builds from within over time, leveraging the models they choose to build AI solutions and workflows.
They need a trusted platform that allows them to monitor, control, manage and secure AI solutions at all levels of the technology stack, using FinOps to assess their ROI.
Building a system that acts as a continuous improvement loop between the two platforms to refine agents’ business processes and ensure that a customer’s intelligence accumulates over time and delivers real business results requires AI engineering expertise for companies with deep industry knowledge.
That’s what Microsoft Frontier Company was founded for: focused on end-to-end frontier transformation, enabling customers to increase their IQ with AI while refining their differentiated value in the markets they serve.
Initial results show significant impact: our engineers and industry experts have worked with us LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) to embed AI into LSEG Workspace and help financial professionals ask complex questions and get quick answers to structured and unstructured financial content. The solution is built on a foundation that is iteratively refined through real-time customer feedback and user testing, accelerating each cycle and continually improving the quality and scope of the model. From LSEG to Land O’Lakes To Unilever To Novo NordiskOur differentiated approach is already delivering measurable results on our clients’ Frontier Transformation journeys.
To achieve scale, we will work closely with our partner ecosystem to extend this unique value to our customers across all markets and segments worldwide. We have solid FDE partnerships with our global SI partners including Accenture, Capgemini, EY, KPMG, PwC and other.
At the heart of this approach is a non-negotiable principle: a customer’s IQ is protected. Their data, their intellectual property, their competitive advantage – none of it is used to train models in a way that commercializes what makes them different in their industry. Satya recently put it bluntly: There is no social license for an AI future that eats up the intelligence of the companies that use it. We founded Microsoft Frontier Company to ensure that doesn’t happen.
We protect this intelligence with a model-diverse, open, heterogeneous AI platform. Customers should not be tied to a single model, nor to a single technology provider. Microsoft’s platform gives companies the flexibility to run the right model for any scenario – whether it’s from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft AI, Open Source, or a specific model tailored to a specific industry – without giving up control to any of them.
To lead this new organization, I have asked Rodrigo Kede Lima to become President of Microsoft Frontier Company. Rodrigo brings 30 years of industry experience and spent the last six years at Microsoft leading company-wide transformations as a sales leader in the Americas and Asia. He is at the forefront of helping customers and partners translate technological change into business outcomes and understand how platform innovation, technology and partner ecosystem collaboration work together to drive growth.
I’m excited about all the things Microsoft Frontier Company will do to help our customers realize the benefits of Frontier Transformation. Ultimately, it all comes down to Intelligence + Trust and empowering our clients to achieve meaningful results and a return on their investments.
Learn more at www.microsoft.com/en-us/frontier-company.
Judson Althoff is CEO of Microsoft Commercial Business. He is responsible for the product strategy, sales, services, support, marketing, operations and revenue growth of the company’s commercial business, which operates in more than 120 regional and national subsidiaries worldwide.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/07/02/microsoft-frontier-company-ai-engineering-that-amplifies-and-protects-your-intelligence/
