At present, AI stands on the point of the same leap, evolving from assistants awaiting instruction to brokers able to serving as office teammates. At Microsoft’s fiftieth anniversary, we’re not merely celebrating our historical past—we’re laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s digital economic system with Azure AI Foundry.
Each period has its inflection factors—moments when area of interest applied sciences all of a sudden grow to be foundational. At present, AI stands on the point of the same leap, evolving from assistants awaiting instruction to brokers able to serving as office teammates. At Microsoft’s fiftieth anniversary, we’re not merely celebrating our historical past—we’re laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s digital economic system with Azure AI Foundry.
The AI panorama has grow to be rather more advanced prior to now two years. As fashions proceed to quickly advance, organizations are balancing learn how to successfully combine proprietary knowledge, domain-specific actions, and safe environments with frontier fashions on the edge with a purpose to get essentially the most out of their AI investments. Nice-tuning and distillation at the moment are essential for customizing fashions and unlocking enterprise worth.
A basis for AI development
That’s why we launched Azure AI Foundry final fall—a unified platform for fashions, instruments, and workflows to assist builders and enterprises design, customise, and handle AI apps and brokers. Consider it as an agent manufacturing facility—a modular manufacturing system designed for contemporary intelligence. Simply as factories standardized manufacturing, Azure AI Foundry standardizes how we construct clever techniques by way of pre-built elements, standardized processes, and steady enchancment through operational suggestions. With entry to greater than 1,800 fashions and complicated tooling, greater than 60,000 prospects are already constructing their futures with Azure AI Foundry.
Extra not too long ago, AI purposes have advanced to incorporate agentic capabilities with tens of 1000’s of organizations utilizing our Azure AI Agent Service since we introduced its public preview in late 2024. One among my favourite examples is Atom, an AI agent constructed by Atomicwork, a number one agentic service administration platform. Atom helps IT and HR groups improve productiveness and their early adopters have reported vital productiveness features, diminished operational prices, and elevated worker satisfaction.
At present, I’m excited to share new capabilities that may additional assist prospects construct and scale superior AI brokers in a reliable approach.
A brand new period of multi-agent techniques
First, we’re saying the overall availability of our agent framework—an extension of Azure AI Foundry’s open-source equipment Semantic Kernel, particularly designed to simplify the orchestration of multi-agent techniques.
Accessible at the moment, the Semantic Kernel agent framework makes it simpler for brokers to coordinate and dramatically reduces the code builders want to jot down. Organizations like KPMG are utilizing Semantic Kernel to orchestrate workflows amongst specialised brokers, dramatically lowering improvement complexity.
On the core of Azure AI Foundry is a suggestions system, designed to allow a steady enchancment cycle by way of real-time telemetry and person suggestions. This strategy is complemented by our superior observability suite—evaluations, tracing, and A/B testing—giving builders unprecedented visibility into agent behaviors and outcomes. These instruments aren’t nearly monitoring; they’re about creating compounding enhancements with each era of your AI system.
Contemplate Fujitsu: after utilizing Azure AI Agent Service and Semantic Kernel to develop an clever, scalable AI agent for gross sales automation, gross sales proposal creation turned 67% extra productive, releasing staff as much as deal with buyer engagement and strategic planning.
We’re utilizing Microsoft’s Semantic Kernel and Azure AI Agent Service to orchestrate a number of specialised AI brokers and an orchestrator AI to coordinate them to reply questions as a staff.
Hirotaka Ito, Lead Engineer of AI, Digital System Platform Unit, Fujitsu
Scaling belief with AI Purple Teaming
As agent capabilities grow to be smarter, managing threat is extra important than ever earlier than. But, MIT Expertise Assessment highlights that greater than half of companies nonetheless manually consider AI—an unsustainable strategy at scale.
To handle this, we’re introducing the AI Purple Teaming Agent—now in public preview. This agent systematically probes AI fashions to uncover security dangers, integrating Azure AI Foundry’s strong analysis techniques with Microsoft Safety’s PyRIT (Python Danger Identification Software) framework. The agent generates complete studies, monitoring enhancements over time, creating an AI security testing ecosystem that evolves alongside your system—a vital asset as agent capabilities develop and potential dangers multiply.
At Accenture, we’re creating extra agentic purposes for our shoppers than ever earlier than. Azure AI Foundry offers us a one-stop store for all the appropriate instruments and providers. To satisfy the rising demand whereas guaranteeing our purposes are secure and safe, we’re wanting into the AI Purple Teaming Agent to robotically scan and guarantee accountable improvement.
Nayan Paul, Managing Director, Accenture
Moreover, our new agentic evaluations—additionally accessible at the moment—present complete threat and high quality assessments, empowering groups to construct reliable, compliant, and superior AI brokers from day one. These analysis metrics assist groups systematically determine and mitigate potential dangers in agent conduct, offering one other layer of safety and compliance.
Assembly builders the place they work
The imaginative and prescient of making expertise that feels so pure and becoming that it turns into second nature guides how we construct for builders. Instruments ought to really feel native, not novel. Over the previous yr, we’ve strengthened our collaboration with GitHub, beginning with the launch of GitHub Fashions to its 150 million-strong developer group, and extra not too long ago by way of a sequence of open integrations with Azure AI Foundry and broadly used open-source frameworks.
At present, we’re extending this philosophy additional with our new Azure AI Foundry extension for Visible Studio Code, now accessible in public preview. Builders can now construct, take a look at, and deploy agent-based purposes totally inside their Built-in Growth Setting (IDE)—no context switching required.
Moreover, we’re making Visible Studio Code much more highly effective by making agent mode in GitHub Copilot accessible to all customers. Agent mode, MCP assist, and code overview takes GitHub Copilot past code options to grow to be your peer programmer, performing advanced, multi-step modifications, operating assessments, and guiding you thru its reasoning.
Constructing the longer term collectively
Whether or not streamlining enterprise processes, reworking buyer interactions, or pioneering multi-agent purposes, Azure AI Foundry gives the highly effective infrastructure builders have to create clever brokers at scale.
As Microsoft marks its fiftieth anniversary, we’re wanting ahead to the thrilling potentialities forward. Be a part of us at Microsoft Construct from Could 19-22, 2025, in Seattle and on-line to study extra about what’s subsequent for Azure AI Foundry. Construct the following 50 years collectively.
