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Microsoft Foundry and AI services

Microsoft Foundry is Azure's platform for models, agents and AI tools under one resource, with tracing, evaluation and governance. It covers Foundry Models (including Azure OpenAI), Foundry Agent Service, Foundry Tools (formerly Azure AI Services), Foundry IQ and Azure Machine Learning.

6 technology profiles in this area

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Overview

Microsoft Foundry, formerly Azure AI Studio and then Azure AI Foundry, puts agents, models and tools under one Azure resource with shared access control, networking and policy. Microsoft states the catalog holds more than 10,000 models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and others. What used to be Azure AI Services is now called Foundry Tools.

The new Foundry portal is generally available for core scenarios, but several parts remain in preview, including agent memory, monitoring and portal access to Foundry IQ. Standalone Azure OpenAI resources and hub-based projects stay in the Foundry (classic) portal until they are upgraded.

There is no platform fee: you pay for the individual services you use. Foundry Local, a separate runtime, runs models on a user's own device with no Azure subscription.

If a prebuilt API such as Speech, Translator or Document Intelligence solves the problem, Microsoft's architecture guide says to consider Foundry Tools before building a custom model.12345

Problems it addresses

  • Choosing among many models6

    The catalog spans models sold by Azure and partner models. Agents in Foundry can switch models without changes to agent code, which keeps early choices reversible.

  • Grounding answers in company data5

    Foundry IQ is a managed knowledge layer, built on Azure AI Search, that returns permission-aware answers with citations from sources such as Blob Storage, OneLake, Azure SQL and SharePoint.

  • Knowing what is production-ready2

    GA covers core scenarios only. Microsoft lists memory, monitoring and agent guardrails as preview and advises against treating preview features as production dependencies.

  • Moving from Azure OpenAI1

    Existing Azure OpenAI resources can be upgraded to a Foundry resource while keeping the endpoint, API keys and state.

  • Retired AI APIs7

    Anomaly Detector, Content Moderator, Language Understanding (LUIS), Metrics Advisor, Personalizer and QnA Maker are retired and should not be used for new apps.

A typical workflow

  1. Make a first model call1

    Create a Foundry project and send a prompt from the SDK in Python, C#, JavaScript or Java.

  2. Build a prompt agent6

    Set instructions, a model and tools in the portal or SDK; Foundry hosts and runs the agent with no containers to manage.

  3. Add knowledge and tools6

    Attach a toolbox with web search, file search, code interpreter or MCP servers, and ground answers on an Azure AI Search index.

  4. Evaluate and trace2

    Use tracing, evaluations and red teaming, which are generally available, before anyone outside the team uses the agent.

  5. Publish6

    Promote the agent to a stable endpoint and share it in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Copilot.

Technologies

  • Cloud service

    Azure AI Search

    Azure AI Search is a managed search and retrieval service that connects company content to apps, agents and language models. It supports full-text, vector, hybrid and multimodal queries and an agentic retrieval engine that powers Foundry IQ knowledge bases. It was formerly Azure Cognitive Search.

    • Data
    • AI
    • Security
  • Cloud service

    Azure Machine Learning

    Azure Machine Learning is Azure's managed service for training, deploying and operating custom machine learning models. It covers notebooks, AutoML, distributed GPU training, pipelines, MLflow tracking, model registries and managed online and batch endpoints, with hybrid options through Azure Arc.

    • AI
    • Data
    • Infrastructure
  • Cloud service

    Microsoft Foundry Agent Service

    Foundry Agent Service is the managed runtime in Microsoft Foundry for building, hosting and scaling AI agents. Teams configure prompt agents with no code, run voice agents, or deploy their own agent code as hosted containers, with Entra identity, tools, tracing and publishing to Teams and Microsoft Copilot.

    • Agents
    • AI
    • Security
  • Cloud service

    Microsoft Foundry Models

    Foundry Models is the model catalog and hosting service inside Microsoft Foundry. It offers models sold and supported by Azure, including all Azure OpenAI models, plus a much larger set from partners and the community, deployable as serverless APIs or on managed compute.

    • AI
    • Infrastructure
  • Cloud service

    Foundry Tools

    Foundry Tools is Microsoft's family of prebuilt AI APIs for speech, translation, language, document and content understanding, vision, search and content safety. Developers call them through REST APIs and SDKs without training a model. It was formerly called Azure AI Services and, before that, Cognitive Services.

    • AI
    • Developer
  • Platform

    Microsoft Foundry

    Microsoft Foundry is Azure's platform for building generative AI apps and agents: a model catalog, an agent runtime, prebuilt AI tools, knowledge retrieval and governance under one Azure resource with shared access control, networking and policy. It was formerly Azure AI Studio, then Azure AI Foundry.

    • AI
    • Agents
    • Developer
    • Security

Use cases

Documented implementations

Agent Platform Chooser

Where to build your AI agent in the Microsoft stack, or whether you need one at all.

Open the lab

Next steps

  1. Check whether a Foundry Tools API already covers your task before training or fine-tuning anything.

  2. If you run standalone Azure OpenAI resources, plan the upgrade to a Foundry resource.

  3. Restrict preview features in production projects until your team has reviewed them.

  4. Use the Agent Platform Chooser to decide between prompt agents, hosted agents and Copilot Studio.

Connected areas

Sources

  1. What is Microsoft Foundry? (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  2. Microsoft Foundry portal general availability overview (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  3. Microsoft Foundry product page (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  4. What is Foundry Local? (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  5. AI and machine learning products (Azure Architecture Center) (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  6. What is Microsoft Foundry Agent Service? (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  7. What are Foundry Tools? (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported

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