Immediately, AI stands on the point of an analogous 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 financial system with Azure AI Foundry.
Each period has its inflection factors—moments when area of interest applied sciences all of a sudden develop into foundational. Immediately, AI stands on the point of an analogous 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 financial system with Azure AI Foundry.
The AI panorama has develop into way more complicated up to now two years. As fashions proceed to quickly advance, organizations are balancing successfully combine proprietary knowledge, domain-specific actions, and safe environments with frontier fashions on the edge with the intention to get essentially the most out of their AI investments. Fantastic-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 via pre-built elements, standardized processes, and steady enchancment by way of operational suggestions. With entry to greater than 1,800 fashions and complex tooling, greater than 60,000 prospects are already constructing their futures with Azure AI Foundry.
Extra lately, AI functions have advanced to incorporate agentic capabilities with tens of hundreds 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 positive aspects, decreased operational prices, and elevated worker satisfaction.
Immediately, I’m excited to share new capabilities that can additional assist prospects construct and scale superior AI brokers in a reliable means.
A brand new period of multi-agent techniques
First, we’re asserting 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 this time, the Semantic Kernel agent framework makes it simpler for brokers to coordinate and dramatically reduces the code builders want to put in writing. 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 via 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 technology of your AI system.
Think about 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 grew to become 67% extra productive, releasing staff as much as give attention to 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 group.
Hirotaka Ito, Lead Engineer of AI, Digital System Platform Unit, Fujitsu
Scaling belief with AI Crimson Teaming
As agent capabilities develop into smarter, managing danger is extra important than ever earlier than. But, MIT Know-how Evaluation highlights that greater than half of companies nonetheless manually consider AI—an unsustainable strategy at scale.
To deal with this, we’re introducing the AI Crimson Teaming Agent—now in public preview. This agent systematically probes AI fashions to uncover security dangers, integrating Azure AI Foundry’s sturdy analysis techniques with Microsoft Safety’s PyRIT (Python Threat Identification Device) framework. The agent generates complete stories, monitoring enhancements over time, creating an AI security testing ecosystem that evolves alongside your system—a important asset as agent capabilities increase and potential dangers multiply.
At Accenture, we’re creating extra agentic functions for our purchasers than ever earlier than. Azure AI Foundry provides us a one-stop store for all the correct instruments and providers. To satisfy the rising demand whereas guaranteeing our functions are secure and safe, we’re wanting into the AI Crimson Teaming Agent to robotically scan and guarantee accountable improvement.
Nayan Paul, Managing Director, Accenture
Moreover, our new agentic evaluations—additionally obtainable at this time—present complete danger 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 habits, offering one other layer of safety and compliance.
Assembly builders the place they work
The imaginative and prescient of making know-how 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 neighborhood, and extra lately via a sequence of open integrations with Azure AI Foundry and extensively used open-source frameworks.
Immediately, we’re extending this philosophy additional with our new Azure AI Foundry extension for Visible Studio Code, now obtainable in public preview. Builders can now construct, take a look at, and deploy agent-based functions completely inside their Built-in Improvement Surroundings (IDE)—no context switching required.
Moreover, we’re making Visible Studio Code much more highly effective by making agent mode in GitHub Copilot obtainable to all customers. Agent mode, MCP help, and code evaluation takes GitHub Copilot past code strategies to develop into your peer programmer, performing complicated, multi-step adjustments, operating exams, and guiding you thru its reasoning.
Constructing the long run collectively
Whether or not streamlining enterprise processes, reworking buyer interactions, or pioneering multi-agent functions, Azure AI Foundry supplies the highly effective infrastructure builders must create clever brokers at scale.
As Microsoft marks its fiftieth anniversary, we’re wanting ahead to the thrilling prospects forward. Be a part of us at Microsoft Construct from Might 19-22, 2025, in Seattle and on-line to be taught extra about what’s subsequent for Azure AI Foundry. Construct the following 50 years collectively.
