IBM and Microsoft join the race to embed AI engineers inside client companies

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced Tuesday that they launched Imagine Enterprise.

The agentic platform is being marketed as a tool to build and govern AI systems internally, drawing from more than 6,000 pre-built AI agents and engineers from both tech giants.

What IBM and Microsoft are offering Imagine Enterprise customers

The sales pitch for the Imagine Enterprise platform by IBM and Microsoft is directed at regulated industries looking to fold the steps between AI pilots and production.

The platform runs on technology from the partner companies, with the agent library supplied by IBM Consulting and its IBM Consulting Advantage as the delivery platform, while Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, Fabric and Azure also run in the background.

Microsoft Entra, Purview and Defender handle identity, governance and security, and engineers from both companies available to be deployed for qualifying engagements.

The platform already carries templates for companies in the financial services, insurance and retail sectors, with public sector, manufacturing, energy, and mobility to be rolled out at a later date, per reports.

SEI, the Nasdaq-listed asset manager that oversees roughly $2 trillion as of September 30, 2026, is among the early firms testing it.

Senior vice president and head of IBM Consulting Mohamad Ali noted the evolution of what clients expect of the AI they deploy, noting that they “want to build an agentic business,” moving on from when they were looking “for AI that simply helps people do the same work a little faster.”

Firms are repackaging how they sell AI to enterprise clients

The Palantir playbook of sending a vendor’s own technical staff to work inside customers’ stacks (forward-deployed engineering) rather than just selling software, has become the go-to for firms selling enterprise-grade AI in 2026.

OpenAI and Anthropic have walked this path already this year, backed by about $4 billion and $1.5 billion respectively. Amazon Web Services’ unit received a billion-dollar pledge, while the Microsoft Frontier Company launched in July with $2.5 billion and about 6,000 industry and engineering experts on its staff.

The forward-deployed engineering selling point lands with potential clients because of the scarcity of expertise. As reported by TechCrunch, citing the executive search firm Christian & Timbers, there are only about 2,000 U.S. engineers with the right mix of sector knowledge and applied AI skill to reliably deliver returns.

Rodrigo Kede Lima, who leads Microsoft Frontier Company, after spending more than 20 years at IBM until 2020, backed “organizations that can turn their data, industry expertise, and AI into action” to win the enterprise AI race.

According to reports around the time Frontier launched in July, Microsoft had a lineup of potential delivery partners that included Accenture, Capgemini, EY, KPMG and PwC.

Microsoft Frontier Company has pitched itself as model-diverse, running systems from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and open-source projects.

Sold on governance for regulated buyers

The sales pitch leans on control, which matters most to banks, insurers and other heavily regulated buyers. Most CIOs have not done the redesign an agent-era workforce needs: Gartner found only 4% have implemented plans to adjust roles for a mixed human-agent workforce.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna framed the gap on the company’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call in October. “Organizations are recognizing that AI is only as effective as the system around it,” he told investors, pointing to the data, workflows and infrastructure surrounding a model rather than the model itself.

Imagine Enterprise is available through IBM Consulting delivery, co-innovation engagements or self-management.

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