Microsoft Research ends AI Frontiers, the group behind AutoGen and the Fara agent

John Langford announced on 6 November that the AI Frontiers group is over and that he is leaving Microsoft. The group behind the AutoGen framework had moved under Microsoft AI in the autumn.

John Langford of Microsoft Research New York wrote on his blog hunch.net on 6 November 2026 that the AI Frontiers group is finished. The post collected more than 400 points on Hacker News. According to secondary reports summarising it, the group had about 50 people and was formed in 2023. Its projects included AutoGen, a framework for coordinating multiple AI agents, and Fara, an agent that operates a computer to complete tasks.

These reports say the group was moved from Microsoft Research into Microsoft AI in early September. Langford reportedly says Microsoft AI's leadership favors scaling over research and that his work had no path to adoption there. One outlet quotes him calling the reorganization a train wreck. Outlets differ slightly on whether he left Microsoft or Microsoft AI. We could not open the original post, so we rely on agreement between several independent summaries.

Is AutoGen still a safe choice? The sources do not give a clear answer. One report says Microsoft stopped providing bug fixes and security fixes for the project, but we could not confirm that with a second source, so we do not treat it as verified. Check the project's repository and Microsoft's official announcements for its current status.

The story illustrates a general problem: agent frameworks appear and disappear quickly and are often held up by a small team. A company that builds a critical process on one becomes dependent on decisions made elsewhere.