HCLTech and Microsoft Partner for Drug and Chip Discovery

In a significant expansion of its strategic alliance with Microsoft, Indian IT major HCLTech has officially joined the Microsoft Discovery platform.

Announced on December 23, 2025, this collaboration positions HCLTech within an elite circle of research institutions and technology innovators dedicated to leveraging agentic AI for high-stakes scientific breakthroughs.

The partnership represents a shift in the IT services landscape, moving beyond traditional software maintenance toward “Science-as-a-Service,” where AI agents manage complex R&D cycles in industries like pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and materials science.

The Microsoft Discovery Platform: Agentic AI for Science

Built on Azure, Microsoft Discovery is an advanced, science-focused platform.

It utilizes agentic AI to provide autonomous systems capable of reasoning, planning, and executing research tasks.

Unlike standard generative AI, which primarily assists with text, the Discovery platform is designed to:

• Unify Scientific Data: It builds complex knowledge graphs that connect proprietary lab data with millions of external scientific papers.
• Automate R&D Workflows: AI agents within the platform can formulate hypotheses, plan virtual experiments, and run high-performance computing (HPC) simulations.
• Reduce Innovation Cycles: During internal testing, Microsoft used the platform to discover novel sustainable materials in just 200 hours, a process that typically takes months or years.

HCLTech Strategic Onboarding and Domain Integration

As part of the initial phase, HCLTech is undergoing “deep technical onboarding” with Microsoft’s engineering teams.

This phase is critical for aligning HCLTech’s proprietary engineering services with the Discovery platform’s architecture.

HCLTech will contribute its deep domain expertise in three high-impact verticals:

1. Drug Discovery: Using AI agents to identify molecule combinations and predict drug efficacy, potentially cutting years off the traditional ten-year pharmaceutical development cycle.
2. Semiconductor Design: Accelerating the development of energy-efficient chips through automated simulation and layout optimization.
3. Chemistry & Materials Science: Developing sustainable composites and lighter alloys for the aerospace and automotive sectors.

Extending AI to Enterprise-Scale R&D

The collaboration aims to take “lab-scale” AI breakthroughs and make them “enterprise-ready.”

HCLTech plans to launch Co-innovation Labs and specialized Proofs of Concept (PoCs) for its global clientele.

HCLTech enables large organizations to automate their research pipelines by integrating its “AI Force” platform with Microsoft Discovery.

This integration ensures the maintenance of strict data governance and intellectual property (IP) protection.

“HCLTech is a natural choice to help expand the Microsoft Discovery platform,” said Aseem Datar, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Discovery and Quantum.

He emphasized that the partnership would focus on uncovering the next generation of transformative technologies.

These advancements will tackle complex global challenges like clean energy and disease prevention.

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