On January 5, 2026, Microsoft officially acquired Osmos, a Seattle-based startup specializing in “Agentic AI” for data engineering, to bolster its Microsoft Fabric platform. This strategic move aims to eliminate the “data prep bottleneck” by using autonomous AI agents to handle the tedious tasks of ingesting, cleaning, and transforming raw, messy data into structured, AI-ready assets. By integrating these agents directly into OneLake, Microsoft is shifting the data engineering paradigm from manual “human-in-the-loop” coding to a “human-as-supervisor” model, where the AI interprets natural language requirements and automatically generates production-grade code like PySpark notebooks.
The acquisition places Microsoft in a stronger position against rivals like Databricks and Snowflake by offering a “self-healing” data infrastructure. Unlike traditional tools that break when a data source changes, Osmos’ technology uses semantic reasoning to automatically detect and adjust to schema evolutions or format shifts without human intervention. This makes high-level data engineering accessible to a broader audience, allowing organizations to focus on generating insights rather than maintaining fragile pipelines. As part of the transition, Osmos is sunsetting its standalone products to focus entirely on its new role as the intelligent “airlock” for the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem.
