A new kind of organization is emerging, one that is moving beyond AI experimentation and putting AI into practice with intelligence across every workflow, decision, and experience. These organizations are leading Frontier Transformation, turning AI strategy into real business advantage.
As business leaders enter this new phase of transformation, they are navigating an expanding universe of AI apps and agents available, and the technology landscape has never been more dynamic—highlighted by projections that over a billion AI agents will be in use by 2028.1 This abundance of choice is changing how organizations discover and evaluate technology—they need intelligent, digital-first experiences to help them move with greater speed and confidence.
For business leaders, the question is no longer whether to adopt AI. It is how to make faster, better-informed decisions about where AI can create business value, and connect business priorities to the solutions that deliver on them.
As business leaders look to move AI workloads into production—teams need assurances that investments will drive value while maintaining governance and control. By procuring apps and agents through Microsoft Marketplace, organizations can:
With the industry’s largest catalog of AI apps and agents, Microsoft Marketplace gives organizations access to thousands of pre-vetted solutions that integrate with their existing Microsoft environment, helping accelerate AI adoption and realize value faster.
Research shows that buying journeys are becoming increasingly self-directed and digitally enabled, with AI playing a growing role in how organizations gather information, explore options, and validate investment decisions. According to Gartner®, “a survey of 646 B2B buyers conducted from August through September 2025 found the shift is already underway, with 45% reporting they used AI during a recent purchase. Buyer journeys are becoming more self-directed and digitally mediated.” Additionally, “Buyers want to engage on their own terms as 67% of B2B buyers state that they prefer a rep‑free experience.”2
As technology ecosystems continue to expand, the challenge facing business leaders is no longer access to innovation, but determining which innovations will create meaningful business value and how quickly they can be adopted at scale. AI is increasingly becoming a decision-support layer in the technology buying journey, helping leaders synthesize information, evaluate alternatives, and navigate more effectively.
To make it faster and easier to explore and select technology solutions, Microsoft Marketplace recently introduced intelligent discovery, now generally available worldwide.
Rather than relying solely on keywords, categories, or product names, customers describe business challenges in natural language, such as “Find agents for collaboration,” receive contextual recommendations, compare solutions, and evaluate options through conversational experiences.
The result is a tailored outcome-oriented approach to technology discovery, creating more efficiencies connecting organizations’ business needs to potential solutions.
Early preview results show that intelligent discovery is helping customers find the right solutions faster, making them 68% more likely to find solutions that meet their needs and take the next step toward a purchase.3
For a retail leader, that might mean identifying AI solutions that improve demand forecasting or personalize customer experiences. For a security team, it could mean strengthening threat detection while fitting into existing cloud investments. For operations leaders, it may mean finding agents that automate repetitive workflows without adding new complexity. Across each scenario, the goal is the same: quickly uncovering the most relevant solutions for a specific business need or industry scenario, reducing evaluation time, and accelerating decision-making with confidence.
Business leaders are already benefiting from intelligent discovery in Marketplace in three important areas:
Natural-language experiences allow businesses to describe goals, challenges, or desired outcomes. AI can then interpret context, surface relevant options, and help narrow choices based on business priorities. Business leaders can now find the right solutions easier and faster.
AI-assisted product comparison experiences can help teams evaluate solutions side by side, understand key differentiators, and assess options against shared business criteria. With easier access to curated insights, they can build consensus more quickly and make more informed decisions with greater confidence.
Interactive chat available on the product detail page can help business leaders ask questions, explore capabilities, and better understand potential fit through natural language interactions. For example, they can explore industry-specific use cases, understand integration requirements, and evaluate fit within their existing stack for faster time-to-value.
AI transformation will not be defined solely by advances in models, applications, or agents. It will also be defined by how effectively organizations adopt the right technology solutions to embed AI into the core of the business.
Microsoft Marketplace continues to evolve in support of this broader shift, helping organizations discover, evaluate, and adopt cloud and AI solutions within a trusted ecosystem. Intelligent discovery is a critical part of that evolution, bringing AI-powered guidance directly into the process of exploring and selecting technology solutions.
1 IDC, IDC Info Snapshot, sponsored by Microsoft, 1.3 Billion AI Agents by 2028, Enterprise Grade and in Production, US53361825, (May 2025).
2 Gartner Press Release, Gartner Sales Survey Finds 67% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Experience (March 2026). [gartner.com]. GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
3 Microsoft Marketplace internal study
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