The Economics of Agent Optimization: Context Engineering for Enterprise AI Agents
Microsoft, Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026
Microsoft's third post on agent economics targets context engineering, often the largest driver of operating cost.
This is the third post in Microsoft's four-part series 'The Economics of Agent Optimization,' which lays out strategies for running AI as a managed investment system on Microsoft Foundry.
Earlier posts covered the three decisions systems rest on and optimization at request runtime; this one addresses making each agent cheaper over time as it learns what works.
Microsoft notes that every agent has a mechanism determining what its model sees on each turn, and in many production systems that choice was set during prototyping and never revisited. Because context selection often drives the largest share of operational cost, revisiting it is presented as the highest-leverage optimization available.