I'm the James Plamondon mentioned below. Having been out of Microsoft for quite a while now, I can't answer the question authoritatively. However, having help

I'm the James Plamondon mentioned below. Having been out of Microsoft for quite a while now, I can't answer the question authoritatively. However, having helped make .NET language-neutral, I can offer these two specualtions: (1) After a decade of making the.NET Runtime and Visual Studio.NET language-neutral, implementing F# required much less investment than you might think (although I'm sure it wasn't "cheap"). (2) When it comes to cloud computing, Microsoft is "all in," and functional languages are ideal for cloud computing (being naturally parallel - see the Church-Rosser property of the lambda calculus). This is the main reason, I suspect.