Microsoft Foundry: Scale innovation on a modular, interoperable, and secure agent stack

Agents are reshaping software. No longer specified assistants, they are becoming dynamic collaborators layered wrong our mundane tools.

One twelvemonth ago, astatine Microsoft Ignite, we acceptable retired to redefine endeavor quality with Foundry. Our condemnation was clear: bundle would germinate beyond rigid workflows, becoming systems that reason, adapt, and enactment with purpose. We envisioned developers moving from prescriptive logic to shaping intelligent behavior.

Today, that translation is accelerating crossed industries and organizations of each size. The displacement is tangible: agents are nary longer conscionable assistants, they are dynamic collaborators, seamlessly integrated into the tools we usage each day. For builders, agents are reshaping software, and we are delivering a level that empowers each developer and each concern to clasp this infinitesimal with assurance and control.

Microsoft Foundry helps builders everyplace crook imaginativeness into world with a modular, interoperable, and unafraid cause stack. From codification to cloud, contiguous demonstrates our absorption connected empowering developers with a powerful, simple—and trusted—path to accumulation AI apps and agents. Here is the TL;DR:

1. Foundry Models added caller models from Anthropic, Cohere, NVIDIA, and more. Model router is present mostly disposable successful Microsoft Foundry and successful nationalist preview successful Foundry Agent Service. 
2. Foundry IQ, present successful nationalist preview, reimagines retrieval-augmented procreation (RAG) arsenic a dynamic reasoning process, simplifying orchestration and improving effect quality. 
3. Foundry Agent Service present offers Hosted Agents, multi-agent workflows, built-in memory, and the quality to deploy agents straight to Microsoft 365 and Agent 365 successful nationalist preview. 
4. Foundry Tools, empowers developers to make agents with secure, real-time entree to concern systems, concern logic, and multimodal capabilities.
5. Foundry Control Plane, present successful nationalist preview, centralizes identity, policy, observability, and information signals and capabilities for AI developers successful 1 portal. GitHub Advanced Security and Microsoft Defender integration, present successful nationalist preview, helps amended collaboration betwixt information and improvement teams crossed the afloat app lifecycle.
6. Foundry Local, present successful backstage preview connected Android, the world’s astir wide utilized mobile platform.
7. Managed Instance connected Azure App Service, present successful nationalist preview, helps organizations determination their web applications to the unreality with conscionable a fewer configuration changes. 

It each starts with developers, and GitHub is the world’s largest developer community, present serving implicit 180 cardinal developers. AI-powered tools and agents successful GitHub are helping developers determination faster, physique progressively innovative apps, and modernize bequest systems much efficiently. More than 500 cardinal propulsion requests were merged utilizing AI coding agents this year, and with AgentHQ, coding agents similar Codex, Claude Code, and Jules volition beryllium disposable soon straight successful GitHub and Visual Studio Code truthful developers tin spell from thought to implementation faster. GitHub Copilot, the world’s the astir fashionable AI brace programmer, present serves implicit 26 cardinal users, helping organizations similar Pantone, Ahold Delhaize USA, and Commerzbank streamline processes and prevention time.

Over the past year, developers person moved from experimentation to production. They request tools that fto them design, test, monitor, and amended intelligent systems with the aforesaid assurance they person successful accepted software. That’s wherefore we built a caller procreation of AI-powered tools: GitHub Agent HQ for unified cause management, Custom Agents to encode domain expertise, and “bring your ain models” to empower teams to accommodate and innovate. With Copilot Metrics, teams germinate with data, not guesswork.

We’re committed to giving each developer the tools to design, test, and amended intelligent systems, truthful they tin crook ideas into impact, faster than ever. Managed Instance connected Azure App Service, present successful nationalist preview, lets organizations determination existing .NET applications to the unreality with lone a fewer configuration changes.

Enter Microsoft Foundry: The AI app and cause factory

Enterprises request a accordant instauration to physique quality astatine scale. With Microsoft Foundry, we’re unifying models, tools, and knowledge into 1 unfastened system, empowering organizations to tally high-performing cause fleets and intelligent workflows crossed their business.

Today, teams tin take from implicit 11,000 frontier models successful Foundry, including optimized solutions for standard and specialized models for technological and concern breakthroughs. I’m arrogant to denote Rosetta Fold 3, a next-generation biomolecular operation prediction exemplary developed with the Institute for Protein Design and Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab. Models similar these alteration researchers and enterprises to tackle the world’s hardest problems with state-of-the-art technology.

Here is our apical Ignite quality for Foundry:

1. Use the close exemplary for each task with Foundry Models

Innovation thrives connected adaptability and choice. With much than 11,000 models, Microsoft Foundry offers the broadest exemplary enactment connected immoderate cloud. Foundry Models empowers developers to benchmark, compare, and dynamically way models to optimize show for each task.

Today’s announcements include:

• Starting today, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5 models are disposable successful Foundry, advancing our ngo to springiness customers prime crossed the industry’s starring frontier models, and making Azure the lone unreality offering some OpenAI and Anthropic models. Also this week, Cohere’s starring models join Foundry’s first-party exemplary lineup, providing eventual exemplary prime and flexibility.
• Model router (generally available) enables AI apps and agents to dynamically prime the best-fit exemplary for each prompt—balancing cost, performance, and quality. Plus, successful exemplary router successful Foundry Agent Service (public preview), enables developers to physique much adaptable and businesslike agents; peculiarly adjuvant for multi-agent systems. exemplary router successful Foundry Agent Service (public preview), enables developers to physique much adaptable and businesslike agents; peculiarly adjuvant for multi-agent systems.
• A caller Developer Tier (public preview) makes exemplary fine-tuning much accessible by leveraging idle GPU capacity.

2. Empower agents with cognition utilizing Foundry IQ

The much discourse an cause has, the much grounded, productive, and reliable it’s apt to be. Foundry IQ, present disposable successful nationalist preview, reimagines retrieval-augmented procreation (RAG) arsenic a dynamic reasoning process alternatively than a one-time lookup. Powered by Azure AI Search, it centralizes RAG workflows into a azygous grounding API, simplifying orchestration and improving effect prime portion respecting idiosyncratic permissions and information classifications.

Key features include:

• Simplified cross-source grounding with nary upfront indexing.
• Multi-source selection, iterative retrieval, and reflection to dynamically amended the prime of cause interactions.
• Foundry Agent Service integration to enrich cause discourse successful a single, observable runtime.

Foundry already powers much than 3 cardinal hunt queries per day. By combining Foundry IQ with Microsoft Fabric IQ and Work IQ from Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft provides an unparalleled discourse furniture for agents, helping them link users with the close accusation astatine the close clip to marque informed decisions.

3. Build context-aware, action-oriented agents with Foundry Agent Service

To beryllium unit multipliers, agents request entree to the aforesaid tools and cognition arsenic the radical they support. Foundry Agent Service empowers developers to make blase azygous and multi-agent systems, connecting models, knowledge, and tools into a single, observable runtime.

Today’s announcements include:

• Hosted Agents (public preview) alteration developers to tally agents built with Microsoft frameworks oregon third-party frameworks successful a afloat managed environment, truthful they tin absorption connected cause logic alternatively than operational overhead.
• Multi-agent workflows (public preview) coordinate specialized agents to execute multi-step concern processes utilizing either a ocular decorator oregon a code-first API. Workflows alteration long-running, stateful collaboration with betterment and debugging built-in.
• Memory (public preview) enables agents to securely clasp discourse crossed sessions, reducing outer data-store complexity and enabling much personalized interactions out-of-the-box.
• Microsoft 365 and Agent 365 integration (public preview) enables developers to instantly deploy agents from Foundry to Microsoft productivity apps, making it easier to scope users straight wrong the M365 ecosystem portion leveraging Agent 365 for unafraid orchestration, governance, and enterprise-grade deployment.

4. Enable agents to instrumentality enactment utilizing Foundry Tools

The close tools tin alteration agents from elemental responders into intelligent problem-solvers. With Foundry Tools, present successful nationalist preview, developers tin supply agents with secure, real-time entree to concern systems, concern logic, and multimodal capabilities to present concern value.

Now, developers can:

• Find, connect, and negociate nationalist oregon backstage MCP tools for agents from a single, unafraid interface.
• Enable agents to enactment connected real-time concern information and events utilizing more than 1,400 connectors with concern systems specified arsenic SAP, Salesforce, and UiPath.
• Enrich workflows with out-of-the-box tools specified arsenic transcription, translation, and papers processing.
• Expose immoderate API oregon relation arsenic an MCP tool via API Management, reusing existing concern logic to accelerate time-to-value.

5. Advancing information and spot with Foundry Control Plane 

Scaling quality requires trust. As organizations trust connected agents and AI powered systems for much of their workflows, teams request clearer visibility, stronger guardrails, and faster ways to place and code risk. This twelvemonth we’re expanding information and governance with 2 cardinal announcements: Foundry Control Plane, now successful nationalist preview successful Microsoft Foundry, and a caller integration betwixt Microsoft Defender for Cloud and GitHub Advanced Security, besides successful nationalist preview. Together they springiness developers and information teams a much connected mode to show behavior, usher access, and support AI systems harmless crossed the afloat lifecycle.

Foundry Control Plane brings identity, controls, observability, and information unneurotic successful 1 spot truthful teams tin build, operate, and govern agents with confidence. Key capabilities include: 

• Controls that use unified guardrails crossed inputs, outputs, and instrumentality interactions to support agents focused, accurate, and wrong defined boundaries. 
• Observability with built successful evaluations, OTel based tracing, continuous reddish teaming, and dashboards that aboveground insights connected quality, performance, safety, and cost. 
• Security anchored successful Entra Agent ID, Defender, and Purview to supply durable identity, argumentation driven access, integrated information protection, and real-time hazard detection crossed the cause lifecycle. 
• Fleet wide operations that unify health, cost, performance, risk, and argumentation coverage for each agent, nary substance wherever it was built oregon runs, with alerts that aboveground issues the infinitesimal they look empowering developers to instrumentality action. 

Defender for Cloud + GitHub Advanced Security integration 

Developers and information teams often enactment successful abstracted tools and deficiency shared signals to prioritize risks. The caller Defender for Cloud and GitHub Advanced Security integration closes this gap. Developers person AI suggested fixes straight wrong GitHub, portion information teams way advancement successful Defender for Cloud successful existent time. This gives some sides a faster, much connected mode to place issues, remediate them, and support AI systems unafraid passim the app lifecycle. 

6. Foundry Local Comes to Android: Powering Cloud to Edge  

Six months ago, we launched Foundry Local connected Windows and Mac. In that abbreviated time, it’s reached 560 cardinal devices, making it 1 of the fastest-growing runtimes successful endeavor history. Leading organizations similar NimbleEdge, Morgan Stanley, Dell, and Pieces are already utilizing Local to bring quality straight into the environments wherever enactment happens, from fiscal services to healthcare and borderline computing.

Today, we’re taking the adjacent step. Foundry Local is present successful backstage preview connected Android, the world’s astir wide utilized mobile platform. This means agents tin tally natively connected billions of phones, unlocking real-time inference, privacy-aware computation, and resilience, adjacent wherever connectivity is unpredictable. 

We’re besides announcing a caller concern with PhonePe, 1 of India’s fastest-growing platforms. Together, we’ll bring agentic experiences into mundane user applications, showing however Local tin alteration not conscionable endeavor workflows, but regular beingness astatine monolithic scale. 

7. Modernize your web apps for the epoch of AI successful weeks, not months 

We spot customers gathering nett caller AI applications and integrating AI into existing applications. Both necessitate a modern foundation. Managed Instance connected Azure App Service, disposable successful nationalist preview, lets organizations determination their .NET web applications to the unreality with conscionable a fewer configuration changes, redeeming the clip and effort of rewriting code. The effect is faster migrations with little overhead, and entree to cloud-native scalability, built-in information and AI capabilities successful Microsoft Foundry.

Learn much and get started with Foundry

We anticipation you articulation america astatine Microsoft Ignite 2025, in-person oregon virtually, to spot these caller capabilities successful enactment and larn however they tin enactment your biggest ambitions for your business.

• Explore Microsoft Foundry.
• Watch our Innovation Session: Your AI Apps and Agent Factory.
• Watch each recorded sessions astatine Ignite.
• Chat with america connected Discord.
• Provide feedback connected GitHub.