Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group has come to an end, according to John Langford, one of its founders. In a post on his blog Machine Learning (Theory), published November 6 and updated November 7, 2026, Langford wrote: "So AI Frontiers is over."
Langford says AI Frontiers was created inside Microsoft Research after ChatGPT's release to coordinate the lab's AI research. It had about 50 people. Its work included the AutoGen agent orchestration framework, the Fara computer-use agent, and fundamental research from the New York City group.
According to the post, the group was moved into Microsoft AI (MAI) in early September. Langford describes the move as a reorg that happened "non-consensually" and attributes the conflict to MAI leadership favouring scaling over research, writing that "there was plenty of evidence that they just did not really want us." He says there will be no AI Frontiers internships in the coming year.
Langford says he placed his team members as best he could and left Microsoft. He does not name a new employer. He writes that he is "not comfortable being at a company where the research I do has no path to real use," and says the other founding leaders of the group reached similar conclusions. The account is Langford's own; Microsoft has not addressed it in a public statement linked from the post.
For developers, the immediate question is the future of projects that came out of the group, such as AutoGen and Fara. The post does not say what will happen to them, so teams depending on those projects should watch their repositories for changes in maintenance.