Microsoft Research
To advance the state of the art in computing and solve difficult world problems through technological innovation and academic-style research.
At a Glance
- Internal Microsoft Product Teams
- Academic and Scientific Community
- Enterprise Developers
- Public Sector and Government
AI Tools by Microsoft Research
(1)
AutoGen
Open Source Multi-Agent Framework
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Products & Services
Generative AI assistant integrated across Microsoft products, heavily based on MSR's AI research and partnership with OpenAI.
A domain-specific programming language for expressing quantum algorithms, developed by MSR's Quantum team.
An efficient SMT solver used worldwide in software verification, testing, and analysis.
A suite of AI services (Speech, Vision, Language) built on fundamental breakthroughs from MSR labs.
Market Position
Leading global corporate research institution, competing with Google Research, Meta FAIR, DeepMind, and IBM Research.
Leadership
Founders
Richard (Rick) Rashid
Founder of Microsoft Research in 1991. Previously a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and developer of the Mach operating system kernel.
Nathan Myhrvold
Former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft. Joined Microsoft in 1986. Previously a postdoctoral fellow in cosmology with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University.
Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. Championed the creation of a dedicated research arm in 1991 to ensure long-term technological competitiveness.
Executive Team
Igor Tsyganskiy
President of Microsoft Research
Joined Microsoft in 2025. Previously served as the Chief Technology Officer at Bridgewater Associates and held senior roles at Salesforce and SAP.
Peter Lee
President, Microsoft Science
Former President of Microsoft Research. Previously the head of DARPA's Transformational Convergence Technology Office and Professor at CMU.
Board of Directors
Founding Story
Microsoft Research was established in 1991 by Rick Rashid, Nathan Myhrvold, and Bill Gates with the vision of creating a laboratory that would conduct long-term research independently of product development cycles, similar to Xerox PARC or Bell Labs.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Corporate-funded R&D center. It operates as a cost center for Microsoft, generating value through technology transfer to product groups and intellectual property creation.
Pricing Tiers
Research is transferred to Microsoft product teams for inclusion in commercial offerings.
Many MSR tools (Z3, TLA+, Q#) are provided for free to the community to drive industry standards.
Target Markets
- Internal Microsoft Product Teams
- Academic and Scientific Community
- Enterprise Developers
- Public Sector and Government
- Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
- Quantum Computing development
- Cloud and Distributed Systems
- Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
- Sustainability and Climate Tech
- Biomedical and Health Sciences
- Azure
- Bing
- Office 365
- Xbox