Microsoft introduced an exciting new platform called Microsoft Discovery, designed to speed up research and development (R&D) using the power of AI. This platform is built to help scientists and engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in science, engineering, healthcare, and technology faster and more efficiently than ever before.

What is Microsoft Discovery?

Microsoft Discovery is a next-generation enterprise platform that allows researchers to work side-by-side with a team of specialized AI agents. These intelligent agents can simulate experiments, reason over large volumes of scientific data, and adapt over time essentially acting as highly skilled research assistants. At the heart of this platform is a graph-based knowledge engine that connects various pieces of scientific knowledge, helping researchers make better and faster decisions.

Built for Scientists, Powered by Azure

The platform is built on Microsoft Azure and integrates advanced computing power through Azure HPC (High Performance Computing) and Azure AI Foundry. It's also highly flexible, allowing researchers to bring their own tools, models, and datasets while maintaining strict security, transparency, and governance standards.

This makes Microsoft Discovery not just powerful, but also trusted and enterprise-ready critical for industries like pharmaceuticals, energy, manufacturing, and more.

A Real-World Breakthrough: Coolant Discovery in Just 200 Hours

To demonstrate how fast and effective Discovery can be, Microsoft used it to discover a new prototype coolant an environmentally friendly alternative to current harmful PFAS-based coolants used in data centers. The entire process took just 200 hours, something that would normally take months or even years using traditional methods. This prototype is already being tested and shows promising results.

AI Agents That Learn and Adapt

What makes Discovery truly different is how it reimagines the R&D process. Instead of static workflows, researchers can interact with AI agents that understand natural language, simulate ideas, and evolve based on new data. You can even assign agents roles like "molecular simulation expert" or "literature review specialist" and guide how they collaborate.

At the center of this system is Microsoft Copilot, which helps coordinate tasks between these agents, setting up workflows, pulling the right data, and ensuring everything runs smoothly.

Partnerships Driving Innovation

Microsoft Discovery is already attracting interest from major companies and research labs. For example,

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is using it for advanced nuclear chemistry research, cutting down the time scientists spend in hazardous environments.
• GSK, a leading healthcare company, is exploring how Discovery can help develop new medicines faster.
• The Estée Lauder Companies is using the platform to accelerate product innovation using 80 years of R&D data.
• Submer, a datacenter sustainability company, praised how the platform reduced coolant discovery timelines dramatically.

Growing Ecosystem and Future Integration

Microsoft is also working with major partners like NVIDIA, Synopsys, and PhysicsX to integrate their technologies into Discovery. For example, NVIDIA’s tools will help speed up materials research and drug development, while PhysicsX will bring AI-powered physical simulation models to boost engineering performance.

Consulting giants like Accenture and Capgemini are also partnering with Microsoft to help organizations deploy and scale the Discovery platform across industries, enabling them to transform their R&D capabilities.

Why It Matters?

Scientific discovery has always been a long, expensive, and complex journey. Microsoft Discovery aims to change that by putting AI in every step of the research process—making it faster, more collaborative, and more accurate. It’s not about replacing scientists; it’s about empowering them to do more, faster.

As Microsoft puts it, the future of research is agentic where humans and AI collaborate in real time, constantly learning, adapting, and discovering together.

And this is just the beginning.