Microsoft is collaborating with Swiss start-up Inait to commercialize its innovative digital brain artificial intelligence (AI) platform. The two companies announced their partnership on March 18, 2025, revealing plans for joint product development, coordinated market strategies, and co-selling initiatives. They are initially targeting the finance and robotics sectors.
Inait, founded in 2017, claims its AI ‘brain programming language’ provides “cognitive abilities for real-world interactions.” According to the company, this technology overcomes the limitations of current AI systems by moving towards “adaptive general intelligence.” Current AI is skilled at recognizing patterns and creating new ones, but struggles to interact with the complexity of the real world. Inait’s digital brain technology bridges this gap by combining convolutional, recurrent, and graph neural networks with large language models to create intelligent action models.
The collaboration will leverage the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and Microsoft’s global reach to accelerate the deployment of Inait’s products. In the finance sector, the focus will be on developing enhanced trading algorithms, risk management tools, and personalized advisory services. In robotics, the companies aim to create more intelligent and adaptable robots for industrial manufacturing.
“This collaboration with Microsoft marks a pivotal moment for Inait,” said Henry Markram, 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, the CEO of Inait, stated that the two companies aim to “co-develop transformative industry solutions going forward.” Catrin Hinkel, the CEO of Microsoft Switzerland, added, “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.”
Microsoft’s interest in the robotics field is further demonstrated by its investment in Figure AI, a humanoid robotics start-up. Microsoft participated in a Series B funding round in 2024 that raised $675 million, alongside other investors including OpenAI, Nvidia, and Intel Capital.
