Microsoft Launches Discovery to Supercharge R&D with Agentic AI

From Research Bottlenecks to AI-Powered Innovation

Microsoft has introduced Discovery, a new agentic AI platform designed to radically transform how enterprises approach research and development. Envisioned as a system of autonomous AI agents, Discovery orchestrates tools, data, and expertise across an organization to handle complex research workflows. It goes beyond traditional AI assistants, acting more like a collaborative partner than a passive tool. Tailored for high-intensity innovation domains—such as drug discovery, materials science, or environmental research—Discovery enables organizations to build intelligent pipelines that evolve and adapt over time. With years of internal refinement by Microsoft Research, the platform promises to break down information silos and accelerate time-to-insight, unlocking value in R&D processes too colossal for human bandwidth alone.

How Discovery Works: Modular, Agentic, and Context-Aware

Discovery leverages a multi-agent system architecture grounded in three primary components: memory, tools, and planning. These agents can be customized to specific domains, retrieving and reasoning over data stored in vector databases, dynamically using tools like simulation engines or code repositories, and orchestrating workflows autonomously with minimal human intervention. Microsoft emphasizes Discovery’s open, modular framework, enabling developers to integrate domain-specific models and securely manage proprietary information. The platform is tailored for deployment in enterprise and hybrid environments, integrating cleanly with Azure services and Microsoft Fabric. Although starting in preview with selective partners, Microsoft plans broader availability soon, signaling its ambition to make agentic AI a staple of enterprise R&D infrastructure.