On Thursday, Microsoft announced a new operating business called Microsoft Frontier Company focused on using Microsoft’s existing AI tools to drive successful enterprise AI deployments. The project will be supported by a $2.5 billion investment from Microsoft and 6,000 industry and engineering experts.
In a statement announcing the venture, Microsoft Commercial Business CEO Judson Althoff pushed back against the Forward Deployment Engineer (FDE) label often applied to these ventures. “This goes beyond what we call forward-facing engineering and will be the largest, most capable, results-driven engineering organization in the industry,” Althoff wrote.
Nevertheless, this venture bears striking similarities to many FDE-based AI ventures announced in recent months. Just two days ago, Amazon Web Services announced an internal commitment of $1 billion to its own AI deployment ventures, explicitly adopting the FDE model. OpenAI and Anthropic have both launched joint ventures along similar lines, but those efforts also involve outside capital from private equity firms.
Microsoft already has engineers in many Fortune 500 companies, so Microsoft’s existing customer base gives this new initiative a significant head start. The announcement mentions early partnerships with Unilever, Land O’Lakes and Accenture, as well as London Stock Exchange Group.
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