Microsoft is investing $2.5 billion into a new group called Microsoft Frontier Co., focused on assisting clients with AI implementations, and said Thursday that 6,000 employees will be embedded with clients in a practice known as forward deployed engineering. The division will contain existing Microsoft FDEs, technical consultants, support staffers and salespeople with experience in specific industries. Rodrigo Kede Lima, who has been leading Microsoft’s Asia business, will be its president. The announcement comes two days after cloud rival Amazon said it was putting $1 billion behind an FDE initiative. Leading AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI both established FDE groups in May. Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s commercial business, said the FDE effort stems from the realization that “customers are in very different places right now, and trying to really figure out AI.” Althoff credits data analytics software vendor Palantir with popularizing the FDE job title. Microsoft generated about $2.1 billion in revenue from enterprise and partner services in the March quarter, up 2.5% from a year earlier.