Microsoft mobilises 6,000 workers to help customers adopt AI

[SAN FRANCISCO] Microsoft is setting up a new organisation with 6,000 employees to help businesses with the technical and strategic work of deploying artificial intelligence.

The division’s workers will have experience across engineering, corporate training and management, as well as within specific industries, Microsoft announced. 

“The skill sets required to do this are quite unique – we’ve got folks that have been in banking for 20 years – in retail, energy, life sciences,” Judson Althoff, chief executive officer of Microsoft’s commercial business, said on Thursday (Jul 2) in an interview on Bloomberg Television. 

Working more closely with customers will help them implement AI more efficiently and inform Microsoft’s own product development decisions, Althoff said.

Traditionally, software vendors have left this kind of lower-margin implementation work to consulting companies.

But in the AI era, many have found that businesses need additional help deploying cutting-edge tools.

Popularised by Palantir Technologies, the model of deploying engineers within customer organisations has since been adopted by vendors from Salesforce to OpenAI.

Amazon's cloud unit on Tuesday announced a similar effort. 

The idea for the new organisation came in part from customer concerns about the ballooning costs of AI, Althoff said.

SEE ALSO

US startup Databricks to raise Singapore headcount by up to 50% as AI demand grows

Amazon’s AWS commits US$1 billion toward new unit for embedded AI engineers

Microsoft to reportedly cut under 2.5% of workforce in latest layoffs

‘Everyone is a stakeholder’ in AI, Microsoft CEO says

Microsoft makes big AI inroads in China by selling OpenAI models

Microsoft, Singapore’s Lightstorm, Singtel join consortium to build India-South-east Asia undersea cable

More

Microsoft can help those businesses improve the way they use AI, such as by swapping out expensive models for cheaper ones, he said. BLOOMBERG