Are you surprised that billions of dollars are devoted to FDEs (Forward Deployed Engineers) with embedded AI experts?

ComputerWorld.com reported that “Microsoft launched a $2.5 billion venture, Microsoft Frontier Company, that the tech giant says “goes beyond” FDE, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its own $1 billion investment into a new AWS FDE platform.”  The July 2, 2026 article entitled " Microsoft and Amazon devote billions of dollars to thousands of FDEs” (https://www.computerworld.com/article/4192535/microsoft-and-amazon-devote-billions-of-dollars-to-thousands-of-fdes-2.html) included these comments:

Both projects will integrate thousands of Microsoft and AWS engineers into customer environments to help them not only build AI tools, but learn essential skills to handle projects on their own going forward. Other big model players, including Anthropic, are also getting into the game with their own FDE services.

The gap between AI investment and ROI is growing, noted Thomas Randall, research director at Info-Tech Research Group, and organizations are under pressure to show production value from AI deployments.

This is the context in which vendor FDEs such as those from Microsoft and AWS will become relevant to “compress learning curves from their deep product knowledge, establish reusable processes, and build capabilities that can then be transferred,” he said.

Interesting, but not surprising!