Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Microsoft is betting that the next phase of artificial intelligence won’t be won by building the best AI model alone. Instead, the company believes success will come from helping businesses actually put AI to work and generate real returns from their AI investments. To make that happen, Microsoft has launched a new operating business called Microsoft Frontier Company. Backed by $2.5 billion and supported by more than 6,000 industry experts, engineers and AI professionals, the new company aims to help large organisations deploy artificial intelligence across their operations.
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Announced on Thursday, Microsoft said Frontier Company will work with businesses to choose the right AI models, integrate them with their internal data and deploy AI systems that deliver measurable business results. And rather than limiting customers to Microsoft’s own AI tools, the company says it will help businesses use models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and even open-source providers, depending on what best suits their needs.
Why a new company?
While companies such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are racing to build faster and more capable AI models, businesses are no longer relying on a single AI provider. Instead, many organisations are combining multiple AI models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and open-source alternatives, for different tasks. While this approach offers greater flexibility, it also makes AI adoption more complex, time-consuming and expensive.
Microsoft says Frontier Company has been created to solve that challenge. It will help customers identify the right AI tools, connect them with enterprise data, deploy AI across their organisations and continuously improve those systems over time. Importantly, Microsoft says customers and not Microsoft will retain ownership of the AI solutions built using their data.
How will the company work?
At the heart of the new business is a model called forward deployment engineering. Instead of simply selling AI software, Microsoft will place its own engineers and AI experts inside customer organisations to help design, build and improve AI systems tailored to their needs.
Microsoft says the goal is to work alongside customers rather than just advise them. These teams will help businesses choose the right AI models, integrate them with existing systems and ensure they deliver real business value. Most of the 6,000 professionals joining Frontier Company already work at Microsoft, although the company plans to hire more talent. The new business will be led by Rodrigo Kede Lima, Microsoft’s former President for Asia.
The launch also reflects a shift in Microsoft’s AI strategy. In an interview with Reuters, Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft Commercial Business, admitted the company made an early mistake by building Copilot exclusively around OpenAI’s models. He said businesses today want the flexibility to switch between different AI models instead of being locked into just one.
“Three years ago, when we built Copilot, we made a mistake by binding it to OpenAI models only,” Althoff told Reuters, adding that now customers are looking for flexibility to switch between different AI models as the technology evolves.
That change became more apparent as competitors such as Google’s Gemini and China’s DeepSeek rapidly caught up, prompting businesses to look beyond a single AI provider.
Microsoft says the combination of a customer’s own data and the flexibility to choose between different AI models is now more valuable than relying on any single model. The company also said customer data will remain private and won’t be used to train Microsoft’s AI models, addressing one of the biggest concerns enterprises have about adopting generative AI.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
