Microsoft Research is funding the next wave of thinking about how humans and artificial intelligence can actually work together—not side by side, but as true collaborators in a team. The tech giant has launched its New Future of Work Call for Proposals, offering $50,000 to $75,000 USD to university researchers worldwide who can tackle one of the field's most pressing blind spots: AI works well when you're alone with it, but teams are still figuring out how to make it work.
This matters because collaboration is how real work happens. Most people spend their days not in isolation but embedded in groups—bouncing ideas off colleagues, dividing tasks, solving problems together. Yet the AI systems we've built so far optimize for individuals, not teams. Microsoft Research is betting that the next frontier in AI capability lies in understanding how to build systems that make a group smarter than the sum of its parts, where both humans and AI bring their distinct strengths to the table.
The research questions on the table are deceptively simple but deeply complex. How do you design an AI system that helps a team of people dramatically outperform either a lone person with AI or a team without it? When should an AI proactively jump into a group conversation, and when should it stay silent? How can AI reduce the tedious, low-value work that drains people's attention during collaboration—the endless email threads, the meeting coordination, the redundant information exchanges—so teams can focus on what actually matters? And critically, how do you build systems where the value created by that collaboration actually benefits the people who created it, rather than being extracted by a platform?
The challenges Microsoft is inviting proposals to address go beyond the technical. They include developing simulation environments where teams can train and test collaborative AI systems, creating behavioral models rooted in real negotiation and conflict-resolution scenarios, and establishing new social norms and etiquette for workplaces where AI is deeply embedded in daily tasks. Researchers are also encouraged to think about AI's unique advantages—its ability to generate ideas instantly, to externalize human thinking, to run low-cost experiments—rather than just trying to make it replicate what humans already do well.
The application process is intentionally lightweight: a one-page proposal of no more than 500 words, including budget information. Applicants must clearly articulate why their research question matters, what impact the outcome could have, how they'll approach the work methodologically, and why their team is qualified to do it. Microsoft is looking for ideas that can move quickly and show material progress in a fast-changing field—this isn't foundational research with a ten-year horizon.
The call opened April 28, 2026, with proposals due May 25th at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Recipients will be announced the week of June 8th. Eligible applicants must be from accredited, degree-granting universities or non-profit research organizations and must have the institutional resources to carry out their proposed work.
The implicit message is clear: the future of work won't be humans replacing AI, or AI replacing humans. It will be teams—human and artificial—learning to think together. Microsoft is putting real money behind finding out how to make that actually work.