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We have architected Microsoft Discovery to be extremely extensible, enabling researchers to combine the newest Microsoft improvements with their very own fashions, instruments, and datasets in addition to a variety of accomplice and open-source options.
We are saying a brand new enterprise agentic platform referred to as Microsoft Discovery to speed up analysis and growth (R&D) at Microsoft Build 2025.
Our purpose is to deliver the ability of AI to scientists and engineers to rework the whole discovery course of—from superior information reasoning and speculation formulation to experimental simulation and iterative studying. Microsoft Discovery permits researchers to collaborate with a crew of specialised AI brokers mixed with a graph-based information engine, to drive scientific outcomes with velocity, scale, and accuracy.
We have architected Microsoft Discovery to be extremely extensible, enabling researchers to combine the newest Microsoft improvements with their very own fashions, instruments, and datasets in addition to a variety of accomplice and open-source options. Built on prime of Microsoft Azure, belief, compliance, transparency, and governance are key design rules of this enterprise-ready platform to allow accountable innovation, maintaining the researcher in management.
At Microsoft, our researchers have leveraged the superior AI fashions and high-performance computing (HPC) simulation instruments in Microsoft Discovery to find a novel coolant prototype with promising properties for immersion cooling in datacenters in about 200 hours—a course of that in any other case would have taken months, if not years. This fast discovery lays the groundwork for future developments in safer and sustainable options throughout a number of industries and is an indication of how Microsoft Discovery can doubtlessly remodel R&D in any firm.
We are working with a notable set of Microsoft prospects who’re occupied with co-innovating in numerous industries together with chemistry and supplies, silicon design, power, manufacturing, and pharma. We are additionally working with a broad accomplice base that’s constructing on prime of the platform to drive this acceleration, and we couldn’t be extra excited. The potentialities are limitless as we understand the complete potential of AI in R&D and we’re simply getting began!
The agentic imaginative and prescient for science
At Microsoft, we wish to amplify the ingenuity of scientists to usher in a brand new period of accelerating discovery and broaden the horizons of analysis. Doing so requires empowering R&D groups with transformative applied sciences that may drive significant enterprise influence. However, R&D has very particular challenges in comparison with different domains:
- Scientific information is huge, nuanced, and distributed.
- The discovery course of is numerous and dynamic, involving a number of extremely specialised strategies and duties, making it very arduous to attach the dots throughout the completely different domains concerned.
- R&D is iterative. There are hardly ever easy, clear-cut solutions. Instead, scientific information evolves by proof, discourse, and refinement.
This complexity calls for a brand new paradigm—one which isn’t aimed toward doing the identical experiments quicker, however reasonably essentially altering the paradigm of how we method R&D.
Imagine if each researcher may collaborate with a tireless crew of clever, synergistic AI brokers with the only real function of accelerated innovation. This is our imaginative and prescient for a brand new agentic R&D paradigm, embedding AI in each stage of the scientific technique.
In this new world, folks and specialised AI brokers will cooperatively refine information and experimentation in actual time in a steady, iterative cycle of discovery—all whereas sustaining the management, transparency, and belief that enterprises and governmental establishments require. This requires a complete platform the place AI can seize each the scientific area and the cognitive processes concerned in managing scientific thought. To understand this imaginative and prescient, scientific AI brokers should be capable to:
- Reason over a fancy and contextual graph connecting all information sources.
- Specialize throughout distinct domains and duties.
- Learn from outcomes and adapt complete analysis plans accordingly.
Introducing Microsoft Discovery
We are taking a giant step towards realizing this imaginative and prescient with Microsoft Discovery, bringing agentic R&D to life by leveraging the newest improvements from Microsoft and the broader scientific ecosystem.
Graph-based scientific co-reasoning
The creation of enormous language fashions (LLMs) hinted at this new period, providing capabilities to hurry up sure scientific duties, significantly for info retrieval and speculation technology. However, LLMs typically lack the contextual understanding required to deeply cause over distributed, nuanced, and infrequently contradictory scientific information.
Microsoft Discovery is constructed on prime of a strong graph-based information engine. Instead of merely retrieving details, this engine builds graphs of nuanced relationships between proprietary information in addition to exterior scientific analysis. This permits the platform to have a deep understanding of conflicting theories, numerous experimental outcomes, and even underlying assumptions throughout disciplines.
This contextual reasoning can be clear. Rather than outputting monolithic solutions, it retains the skilled within the loop with detailed supply monitoring and reasoning, offering the extent of transparency in AI methods that builds belief, ensures accountability, and permits consultants to validate and perceive each step or make any changes as wanted.
Specialized discovery brokers for conducting analysis
Instead of siloed and static pipelines, Microsoft Discovery implements a steady and iterative R&D cycle the place researchers can information and orchestrate a crew of specialised AI brokers that study and adapt over time—not only for reasoning, however for conducting analysis itself. The definition of those specialised brokers captures each area information and course of logic, merely by pure language.
R&D groups will be capable to construct a customized AI crew aligned to their particular processes and information, simply encoding these brokers with their experience and methodologies to make sure they’ll adapt and orchestrate as analysis progresses. This method is way extra versatile than hard-coding behaviors of as we speak’s digital simulation instruments, which regularly are extremely specialised and lack streamlined integration with others, and it signifies that analysis groups now not require computational experience to drive influence. As an instance, customers can entry and outline varied brokers’ specialties, comparable to ‘molecular properties simulation specialist’ or ‘literature review specialist.’ They may even recommend which instruments or fashions the brokers ought to use or create, and the way they need to collaborate with others.
This natural, bidirectional collaboration is a game-changer for managing R&D: brokers usually are not solely able to working for the researchers, however with them in a fashion that may actually amplify human ingenuity—seeing each the forest and the timber without delay.
At the middle of this collaboration is Microsoft Copilot, appearing as a scientific AI assistant that orchestrates these specialised brokers primarily based on the researcher’s prompts. Copilot is conscious of all of the instruments, fashions, and information bases in a buyer’s catalog on the platform, can establish which brokers to leverage, and might arrange end-to-end workflows that cowl the complete discovery course of by combining superior AI and HPC simulations by the joint work of those brokers.
Extensible and enterprise-ready
Microsoft Discovery is constructed on prime of Azure infrastructure and companies, leveraging by design the belief, compliance, and governance controls on the core of Microsoft’s safe cloud basis.
We imagine within the energy of an open ecosystem that leverages the strengths of Microsoft’s newest developments together with different revolutionary options from prospects and companions. Microsoft Discovery permits R&D groups to increase the platform’s catalog by bringing their toolkit of option to cowl their particular analysis wants in a complete scientific bookshelf. This extensibility on the core of Microsoft Discovery simplifies the onboarding of their selection of computational instruments, fashions, and information bases—whether or not they’re customized developments, open-source, or business options. As we deliver to market new capabilities in dependable quantum computing and embodied AI, the platform will stay future-proofed with the perfect applied sciences accessible at Microsoft and throughout the business.
Real influence: Discovering a novel, non-PFAS coolant prototype
Over the previous months, we’ve made important strides aiding computational scientists of their analysis and incorporating cutting-edge improvements from Microsoft Research. This has led to exceptional breakthroughs, comparable to discovering a novel solid-state electrolyte candidate that makes use of 70% much less lithium in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and enabling fast computational simulations that accelerate scientific discoveries at Unilever. Microsoft Discovery is designed to deliver these improvements to each scientist—not solely these with deep computational experience.
One of the extra thrilling early use circumstances of Microsoft Discovery is unfolding on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the place scientists are utilizing Microsoft Discovery’s superior generative AI and HPC capabilities to additional develop machine studying fashions that predict and optimize advanced chemical separations—a vital course of in nuclear science. These separations are important for successfully isolating radioactive components after the nuclear fission course of, a notoriously time-sensitive and extremely chemically advanced process. In the longer term, the crew goals to make use of these developments to cut back the time scientists should spend in hazardous radioactive environments, whereas bettering yields and purity, enhancing each security and effectivity.
—Scott Godwin, Director, Center for Cloud Computing, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
By leveraging superior AI fashions and HPC instruments for simulation that will probably be accessible on Microsoft Discovery, Microsoft researchers found a novel, non-PFAS, immersion datacenter coolant prototype in about 200 hours.1 Current coolants typically take a few years to develop and might include dangerous PFAS-based chemical substances that make them unviable to make use of, as there’s a world push to ban these “forever chemicals” in favor of extra environmentally pleasant choices on this business and plenty of others.
After the digital discovery course of, we efficiently synthesized this coolant prototype in beneath 4 months, and it’s at present beneath additional evaluation and refinement. We have already examined a number of the main properties of this materials and so they align to the AI predictions, which is a testomony to the accuracy of the predictive fashions used. While this venture is barely an experiment, it lays the groundwork for future developments and enhancements in coolant expertise and demonstrates how the mix of HPC and specialised AI fashions can speed up and remodel R&D processes.
According to Daniel Pope, founding father of Submer, an organization whose mission is to construct datacenters with a powerful deal with sustainability, effectivity, and a wiser utilization of assets:
The velocity and depth of molecular screening achieved by Microsoft Discovery would’ve been unimaginable with conventional strategies. What as soon as took years of lab work and trial and error, Microsoft Discovery can accomplish in simply weeks, and with larger confidence.
A rising ecosystem
We are placing this enterprise-grade platform into the fingers of worldwide innovators to show real-world influence throughout industries—from chemistry and pharma to manufacturing and silicon design.
It’s solely with a powerful ecosystem that we’ll be capable to understand the complete potential of Microsoft Discovery, and it’s why we’re working with prospects, companions, and different Microsoft groups to deliver first-party developments along with main business instruments and area experience.
Customers and inside collaborators
GSK is working to revolutionize healthcare, uniting science, expertise and expertise—together with world-class partnerships—to get forward of illness collectively. The firm makes use of tech to advance science and speed up the event and supply of medicines and vaccines to positively influence the well being of individuals at scale.
GSK’s depth and breadth of information and built-in use of tech throughout each a part of its enterprise—from early scientific exploration by to fabricate and supply of medicines and vaccines in market—present a novel providing when working with others. The firm appears ahead to a doable partnership with Microsoft with the intent of additional advancing GSK’s generative platforms for parallel prediction and testing, creating new medicines with larger velocity and precision, and doubtlessly remodeling medicinal chemistry to new unimaginable ranges. The potentialities forward are thrilling, and collectively, we will try for probably the most revolutionary options for sufferers and for well being.
The Estée Lauder Companies has gained a worldwide repute for high-quality skincare, make-up, haircare and perfume merchandise that ship extremely efficient outcomes demonstrated by intensive analysis and product analysis. The firm is worked up to harness the ability of Microsoft Discovery to additional speed up the event of merchandise that uphold the best requirements of excellence.
Our proprietary R&D information, stemming from the minds of our sensible scientists and almost 80 years of analysis, growth, and experimentation, is a key aggressive benefit. The Microsoft Discovery platform will assist us to unleash the ability of our information to drive quick, agile, breakthrough innovation and high-quality, personalised merchandise that may delight our customers.
—Kosmas Kretsos, PhD, MBA, Vice President, R&D and Innovation Technology, The Estée Lauder Companies
Additionally, Microsoft is releasing a medical analysis agent that makes use of the identical graph-based information engine accessible in Microsoft Discovery to reinforce info retrieval by synthesizing insights from trusted medical journals. As a part of a broader set of specialised brokers within the healthcare agent orchestrator code pattern in Azure AI Foundry, this agent permits researchers and builders to ship actionable and evidence-based steerage tailor-made particularly to advanced, multi-disciplinary healthcare workflows—comparable to most cancers care.
Domain-specific choices
Combining Microsoft’s and NVIDIA’s strengths in generative Al and scientific computing, we plan to combine Microsoft Discovery with NVIDIA ALCHEMI and NVIDIA BioNeMo NIM microservices to speed up breakthroughs in supplies and life sciences. Materials researchers will now have entry to state-of-the-art inference capabilities for candidate identification, property mapping, and artificial information technology. Biomolecular R&D groups will be capable to speed up Al mannequin growth for drug discovery, leveraging pre-trained BioNeMo Al workflows, all in Microsoft Discovery’s unified, enterprise-grade platform.
Researchers may deploy their AI brokers on high-performance NVIDIA-accelerated Azure AI Foundry infrastructure, enabling them to effectively course of and synthesize giant volumes of scientific information with distinctive velocity and responsiveness for accelerated discovery and enhanced analysis outcomes.
AI is dramatically accelerating the tempo of scientific discovery. By integrating NVIDIA ALCHEMI and BioNeMo NIM microservices into Azure Discovery, we’re giving scientists the power to maneuver from information to discovery with unprecedented velocity, scale, and effectivity.
—Dion Harris, Senior Director of Accelerated Data Center Solutions, NVIDIA
Additionally, we plan to combine Synopsys’ business options in Microsoft Discovery to speed up semiconductor engineering, serving to each {hardware} designers and software program builders ship superior merchandise.
Semiconductor engineering is among the many most advanced, consequential, and high-stakes scientific endeavors of our time, which makes it a particularly compelling use case for synthetic intelligence. By integrating Synopsys’ pioneering AI-powered design options with Microsoft Discovery, we will understand the potential of agentic AI, re-engineer chip design workflows, supercharge engineering productiveness, and speed up the tempo of expertise innovation.
—Raja Tabet, Senior Vice President, Engineering Excellence Group, Synopsys
Microsoft can be working with PhysicsX, planning to combine the corporate’s physics AI basis fashions into Microsoft Discovery so prospects can unlock new ranges of automation, optimization, and efficiency throughout engineering and manufacturing.
The Microsoft Discovery platform represents a seismic shift in how AI can speed up scientific discovery and engineering. This is about remodeling how advanced bodily methods are designed, constructed, and operated throughout superior industries—in aerospace and protection, semiconductors, minerals and supplies, power, and automotive. Together, PhysicsX and Microsoft are constructing the software program infrastructure that may outline the following period of engineering.
—Jacomo Corbo, Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder, PhysicsX
Integration assist
Lastly, we’re excited to accomplice with a rising checklist of software program integrators, comparable to Accenture and Capgemini, to assist prospects and collaborators scale customized platform deployments.
Together with Microsoft, we’re shaping a daring AI imaginative and prescient for organizations who use deep science to deliver revolutionary merchandise to sufferers and customers. Our laboratory transformation methods and Microsoft’s Microsoft Discovery platform create a dynamic ecosystem for scientific development. This collaboration will assist us understand the laboratory of the longer term, enabling scientists to push the boundaries of discovery, experimentation, and testing with larger velocity and precision.
—Adam Borenstein, Managing Director, Global Laboratory Reinvention Lead, Accenture
We are excited to be bringing the Microsoft Discovery platform and AI brokers to R&D-intensive sectors. We imagine these applied sciences have the potential to allow skilled scientists to unlock step modifications within the tempo of innovation, bringing transformative advantages to enterprise and society. This partnership will drive productiveness in laboratory-driven R&D by drawing on Capgemini’s business expertise, specialist bodily and organic AI capabilities, and science-led ‘lab-in-the-loop’ mental property, together with that of Cambridge Consultants, the deep tech powerhouse of Capgemini. For our purchasers this might imply accelerated discovery and predictive modelling or different aggressive benefits by utilizing information and AI at scale.
—Roshan Gya, Chief Executive Officer, Capgemini Invent
Ready to take the following steps?
Learn extra about how Microsoft Discovery can assist scientists and engineers remodel analysis and growth:
¹Based on the definitions of PFAS supplied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2021), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Buck et. al. (2011)