Microsoft to Spend $2.5 Billion on 6,000 Engineers Helping Customers Deploy AI

Microsoft announced on Thursday a $2.5 billion investment in a new business unit called Microsoft Frontier, Fortune reported. The unit will deploy 6,000 forward-deployed engineers to work directly with customers on using the company's AI tools to transform operations and demonstrate measurable returns on investment.

” The announcement came days after Amazon said it would spend $1 billion on a similar initiative.

Microsoft recently partnered with the London Stock Exchange Group to help its finance department query AI across structured and unstructured financial content. The company’s platform allows customers to select models from providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source options, Althoff stated. Customer data, IP, and proprietary intelligence are not used to train models, he added.

Satya Nadella wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that the goal is to help enterprises build their own AI capabilities and turn knowledge, workflows, and expertise into continuously improving systems. Microsoft has worked with Land O’Lakes, Unilever, and Novo Nordisk on AI projects that produced measurable outcomes and plans to scale those results globally through systems integrators including Accenture, Capgemini, EY, KPMG, and PwC, Althoff said.

Microsoft shares are down about 20% in the past year.

In a July essay, Nadella wrote that the stakes of AI involve how companies build intellectual property around models to create human-driven value.