Global Innovators Accelerate Scientific Discovery with AI-Driven Agents

Microsoft Discovery is a new enterprise AI agent platform designed to transform research and development (R&D) across sectors. By orchestrating specialized AI agents with a sophisticated graph-based knowledge engine, researchers and scientists can reason contextually through complex data, simulate experiments, and iterate research plans faster than ever before. Built on Azure High Performance Computing (HPC) and Azure AI Foundry, it emphasizes trust, compliance, and extensibility. Real-world impact is demonstrated by Microsoft researchers rapidly developing a sustainable immersion datacenter coolant, a process that normally takes years, in just 200 hours. GSK aims to accelerate medicinal chemistry, while The Estée Lauder Companies focuses on faster product innovation. The platform integrates partner technology from NVIDIA, Synopsys, and PhysicsX to enable advances in pharma, materials, semiconductor design, and industrial engineering. Strategic alliances with Accenture and Capgemini are helping scale deployments. Microsoft Discovery is positioned as a future-proof system for solving the most challenging R&D problems using AI agents and Microsoft’s secure cloud foundation.

1. 01R&D processes in science and engineering are slow, complex, and highly iterative.
2. 02Scientific knowledge is distributed, nuanced, and siloed across domains.
3. 03Simulating and validating new materials (such as sustainable datacenter coolants) can take years with traditional methods.
4. 04Connecting data, tools, and knowledge across domains is difficult for research teams lacking deep computational expertise.
5. 05Compliance and trust in AI systems is required for enterprise-scale adoption.

1. 01Microsoft Discovery orchestrates domain-specialized AI agents (e.g., for simulation, literature review) using a graph-based knowledge engine.
2. 02Built on Azure HPC, Azure AI Foundry, and Microsoft Copilot for trusted and compliant infrastructure.
3. 03Researchers can build and define custom agents to fit specific R&D workflows.
4. 04Partnerships extend the platform with NVIDIA (AI/GPUs), Synopsys (semiconductor design), and PhysicsX (physics models).
5. 05Consulting partners Accenture and Capgemini scale adoption and co-innovation.

1. 01Reduced the time to discover a sustainable, non-PFAS datacenter coolant from years to about 200 hours (plus under 4 months for lab prototype synthesis).
2. 02Enabled faster development cycles at GSK for medicinal chemistry and at The Estée Lauder Companies for product innovation.
3. 03Brings capabilities for rapid parallel prediction, testing, and workflow automation to R&D teams.
4. 04Accelerates semiconductor and material science breakthroughs through third-party integrations.

• Orchestrated domain-specialized AI agents for R&D
• Trusted, compliant AI infrastructure for enterprise adoption
• Accelerated research and iteration cycles
• Extended platform through strategic partner integrations