{"id":40372,"date":"2025-05-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/blog\/?p=40372"},"modified":"2025-06-06T16:27:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T23:27:34","slug":"transforming-rd-with-agentic-ai-introducing-microsoft-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/blog\/transforming-rd-with-agentic-ai-introducing-microsoft-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming R&D with agentic AI: Introducing Microsoft Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are announcing a new enterprise agentic platform called Microsoft Discovery to accelerate research and development (R&D) at Microsoft Build 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our goal is to bring the power of AI to scientists and engineers to transform the entire discovery process\u2014from advanced knowledge reasoning and hypothesis formulation to experimental simulation and iterative learning. Microsoft Discovery enables researchers to collaborate with a team of specialized AI agents combined with a graph-based knowledge engine, to drive scientific outcomes with speed, scale, and accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Get started by using Azure HPC and Azure AI Foundry infrastructure<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

We have architected Microsoft Discovery to be highly extensible, enabling researchers to integrate the latest Microsoft innovations with their own models, tools, and datasets as well as a wide range of partner and open-source solutions. Built on top of Microsoft Azure<\/a>, trust, compliance, transparency, and governance are key design principles of this enterprise-ready platform to enable responsible innovation, keeping the researcher in control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Microsoft, our researchers have leveraged the advanced AI models and high-performance computing (HPC) simulation tools in Microsoft Discovery to discover a novel coolant prototype with promising properties for immersion cooling in datacenters in about 200 hours\u2014a process that otherwise would have taken months, if not years. This rapid discovery lays the groundwork for future developments in safer and sustainable solutions across multiple industries and is a demonstration of how Microsoft Discovery can potentially transform R&D in any company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are working with a notable set of Microsoft customers who are interested in co-innovating in diverse industries including chemistry and materials, silicon design, energy, manufacturing, and pharma. We are also working with a broad partner base that is building on top of the platform to drive this acceleration, and we couldn\u2019t be more excited. The possibilities are endless as we realize the full potential of AI in R&D and we are just getting started! <\/p>\n\n\n

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The agentic vision for science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At Microsoft, we want to amplify the ingenuity of scientists to usher in a new era of accelerating discovery and expand the horizons of research. Doing so requires empowering R&D teams with transformative technologies that can drive meaningful business impact. However, R&D has very specific challenges compared to other domains: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • Scientific knowledge is vast, nuanced, and distributed. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The discovery process is diverse and dynamic, involving multiple highly specialized methods and tasks, making it very hard to connect the dots across the different domains involved. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • R&D is iterative. There are rarely simple, clear-cut answers. Instead, scientific knowledge evolves through evidence, discourse, and refinement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    This complexity demands a new paradigm\u2014one that isn\u2019t aimed at doing the same experiments faster, but rather fundamentally changing the paradigm of how <\/em>we approach R&D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Imagine if every researcher could collaborate with a tireless team of intelligent, synergistic AI agents with the sole purpose of accelerated innovation. This is our vision for a new agentic R&D paradigm, embedding AI in every stage of the scientific method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In this new world, people and specialized AI agents will cooperatively refine knowledge and experimentation in real time in a continuous, iterative cycle of discovery\u2014all while maintaining the control, transparency, and trust that enterprises and governmental institutions require. This requires a comprehensive platform where AI can capture both <\/em>the scientific domain and the cognitive processes involved in managing scientific thought. To realize this vision, scientific AI agents must be able to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    • Reason over a complex and contextual graph connecting all knowledge sources.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Specialize across distinct domains and tasks.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Learn from results and adapt entire research plans accordingly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      Introducing Microsoft Discovery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      We are taking a big step toward <\/strong>realizing this vision with Microsoft Discovery, bringing agentic R&D to life by leveraging the latest innovations from Microsoft and the broader scientific ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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