Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, operates in a variety of markets, including cleaning, beauty and other consumer products. But they all share the same demand: the need to advance research to improve the products that more than 3.4 billion people use every day. To address this challenge and drive innovation, Unilever is harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure Quantum Elements, a cloud service with innovative quantum hardware, software and solutions designed to accelerate scientific discovery.
“If you had a million possible solutions to your problem, how would you figure out where to start?” That’s the question Alberto Prado, Global Head of R&D Partnerships and Digital at Unilever, began to grapple with.
Over the past two and a half years, Unilever has partnered with Microsoft to identify new digital capabilities to drive product innovation. Unilever is bringing its digital vision to life through the transformational DataLab — the digital counterpart to the company’s physical labs — with the help of Microsoft Azure. From unlocking the secrets of our skin microbiome to reducing the carbon footprint of a multi-billion dollar business, Unilever is redefining what it means to be a consumer goods company in the modern world with cutting-edge science.
Accelerating scientific discovery
Like Copilot on Azure, Azure High Performance Computing and the advanced simulation capabilities of Azure Quantum Elements, Unilever can query scientific information using natural language, running thousands of computer simulations in the time it would take to run dozens of lab experiments. Unilever scientists can use the data collected from these simulations to fine-tune models that test tens of thousands of materials or allow them to explore complex chemical reactions at substantial speed. “This kind of discovery and exploration would be unprecedented in our previous way of working in terms of time, resources and patience,” says Mike Dale, head of digital R&D at Unilever.
Unilever’s research and development teams can now expand their search for new molecules that restore natural bonds in hair fibers across more hair types, redefining the standard of personalized hair care for brands like Dove and TRESemmé. Additionally, by placing scalable simulations at the forefront of the discovery funnel, Unilever will be even better able to accelerate the delivery of solutions within its key sustainability focus areas.
Unilever has been on a transformative journey which includes one of the largest migrations to the cloud in the consumer goods industry. Now, with Azure Quantum Elements, Unilever is unlocking new possibilities. “We are expanding the creativity and discovery power of our researchers to find new solutions to problems in science and technology that we could only have dreamed of in the past,” says Prado.
With Unilever’s vast repository of proprietary data and a century of scientific expertise in personal and home care, the consumer goods company is capitalizing on this technological leap with Microsoft. “We’re no longer preparing for the future; we’re in the future now, and that’s really exciting,” Prado concludes.