Microsoft and the Swiss start-up Inait are joining forces to bring Inait’s digital brain artificial intelligence (AI) platform to market. Announced on March 18, 2025, the collaboration will encompass joint product development, market strategies, and co-selling efforts, with an initial focus on the finance and robotics sectors.
Inait, founded in 2017, describes its AI ‘brain programming language’ as providing “cognitive abilities for real-world interactions.” This approach is intended to overcome limitations in current AI systems, aiming towards “adaptive general intelligence.” The company notes that despite current AI systems’ strengths in pattern recognition and generation, they often struggle with the complexities of real-world interactions. Inait’s digital brain technology aims to bridge this gap by combining convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, graph neural networks, and large language models to develop intelligent action models.
The partnership will leverage Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and its global reach to accelerate the deployment of Inait’s products. In the finance sector, the focus will be on advanced trading algorithms, risk management tools, and personalized advice. For robotics, the aim is to develop more intelligent and adaptable robots for industrial manufacturing.
“This collaboration with Microsoft marks a pivotal moment for Inait,” said Henry Markram, the founder and chairperson of Inait. “After two decades of R&D we now have digital brain replicas and the know-how to teach them to perform AI. Microsoft’s global ecosystem is ideal to globally scale our disruptive digital brain-based AI.”
Richard Frey, Inait’s CEO, added that the two companies will “co-develop transformative industry solutions going forward.”
Catrin Hinkel, the CEO of Microsoft Switzerland, said, “We believe that Inait’s approach to AI has the potential to bring significant value to the industry. Their neuroscience-inspired technology is truly innovative, and we are pleased to collaborate with them to bring these advancements to market, starting with the fintech and robotics sectors where we see opportunities for immediate transformation.”
In a related development, Microsoft participated in a Series B funding round for Figure AI, a humanoid robotics start-up, in 2024. The round, which raised $675 million, also included investments from OpenAI, Nvidia, and Intel Capital.
