Microsoft to use $2.5 billion & 6,000 employees to help clients use AI

Microsoft will invest $2.5 billion in a new group to assist clients with AI implementation. The new venture, Microsoft Frontier, will deploy 6,000 employees with clients for forward-deployed engineering. This comes as Microsoft's rivals are also focusing on forward-deployed engineering, with Amazon investing $1 billion behind an FDE initiative and OpenAI and Anthropic also operating similar units.