TL;DR

Key dev updates: Agent Service hits GA with Model Context Protocol (MCP) support—integrate any backend with standardized JSON-RPC calls, no more custom OpenAPI specs. New models include o3-pro for enterprise reasoning, Sora for video generation, and DeepSeek-R1 for open-source reasoning. Platform changes: New unified Azure AI Foundry resource type with Projects for self-service development, simplified API version management with latest and preview endpoints, unified SDK consolidating multiple client libraries, and VS Code extension with full agent CRUD + YAML IntelliSense. APIs to know: Voice Live API (beta) for real-time speech interactions, enhanced Responses API with MCP tool calling, and new SDK updates including Bing Custom Search, SharePoint grounding, and Microsoft Fabric tools. Plus Model Safety Leaderboards help incorporate safety as a first-class criterion alongside performance. Building on Azure’s second consecutive year as a Gartner Leader in data science and ML platforms, these updates pair technical excellence with proven organizational frameworks that help development teams scale from prototype to production.

🚀 Join the Azure AI Foundry Developer Community

Never build alone, join the community! Connect with over 25,000 developers through Discord and GitHub Discussions, attend live events hosted by Microsoft teams, complete free open-source courses on AI fundamentals, and explore code samples to kickstart your AI applications. The community offers everything from live AMA sessions on Model Context Protocol to weekly .NET + AI office hours, plus comprehensive learning paths for AI Agents, MCP, and Generative AI development.

Models

o3-pro Enterprise Reasoning

o3-pro delivers the highest reasoning performance by using more compute to provide deeper, more consistent answers across complex enterprise tasks. Features multimodal input support, structured outputs, tool integration, and enterprise-ready capabilities—designed for organizations tackling their most challenging reasoning problems with precision and depth.

Sora Video Generation

Sora is now available in public preview in Azure AI Foundry, bringing enterprise-grade video generation capabilities. Create up to 20-second videos in 1080p resolution with landscape, portrait, or square aspect ratios from text prompts. Currently supports text-to-video with image-to-video coming soon—perfect for marketing campaigns, educational content, and creative workflows.

codex-mini Lightweight Coding Assistant

The new codex-mini model joins Azure OpenAI as a lightweight, efficient option for code generation, completion, and programming assistance—ideal for embedded scenarios where performance and cost matter.

Grok 3 & Grok 3 Mini Now Available

Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini from xAI are now available in Azure AI Foundry. These models excel at real-time conversational AI and general-purpose reasoning tasks with competitive performance and pricing.

DeepSeek-R1-0528 Advanced Reasoning

DeepSeek-R1-0528 brings the latest evolution in reasoning-optimized models with improved depth of reasoning and inferencing capabilities. This open-source model approaches leading models like OpenAI o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro with enhanced chain-of-thought prompting, reinforcement learning fine-tuning, and broader multilingual understanding—ideal for intelligent agents, copilots, and research applications.

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Agents

Model Context Protocol Support (Preview)

Foundry Agent Service becomes first-class MCP clients with today’s preview. Bring any remote MCP server—self-hosted or SaaS—and Azure AI Foundry automatically imports capabilities, keeps them updated, and routes calls through enterprise security. Think “USB-C for AI integrations”—the open JSON-RPC protocol lets you publish tools and resources once, then connect to any compliant agent runtime. No more hand-rolling Azure Functions or managing OpenAPI specs for every backend.

SharePoint Tool Integration (Preview)

Seamlessly integrate agents with Microsoft SharePoint to chat with private documents securely. Powered by the Microsoft 365 Copilot API, agents can connect to SharePoint sites with intelligent indexing, query processing, and content chunking. Features identity passthrough (On-Behalf-Of) authentication for proper access control, ensuring users only access documents they have permission to view—maintaining enterprise-grade security while grounding AI responses in up-to-date business content.

Multi-Agent Workflows & Orchestration

Coordinate multiple specialized agents within unified workflows to handle complex, multi-step business processes. Agents can collaborate seamlessly to boost operational efficiency and accelerate decision-making across your organization.

Unified Semantic Kernel + AutoGen Runtime

Microsoft is consolidating Semantic Kernel and AutoGen into a unified agentic AI toolkit, making Semantic Kernel the primary framework for production-ready AI applications. As announced at Build 2025, this strategic merger brings AutoGen’s advanced multi-agent research capabilities into Semantic Kernel’s stable, enterprise-grade foundation—delivering composable agent patterns with enhanced interoperability including Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol support while maintaining the reliability needed for production deployments.

Agent Catalog & Code Samples

Access a centralized catalog of agent code samples with predefined instructions, actions, APIs, knowledge, and tools. Quickly bootstrap solutions for translation, sales, customer service, and domain-specific workflows.

Healthcare Agent Orchestrator

Industry-focused healthcare agent tools support multi-disciplinary data workflows, helping clinicians streamline repetitive tasks and improve care delivery through intelligent automation.

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Tools

Enhanced VS Code Extension

The updated Azure AI Foundry VS Code extension now supports full agent CRUD operations, YAML IntelliSense, and direct deployment—perform complete Azure AI Foundry workflows without leaving your IDE.

Trace Agents Debugging

New trace agents functionality provides detailed visibility into agent threads, displaying the exact sequence of inputs and outputs for each agent run. Debug and monitor agent behavior with unprecedented transparency.

Enhanced GitHub Development Platform

Major GitHub integration enhancements streamline AI-centric development workflows. Manage Azure AI Foundry functionalities directly within GitHub repositories for seamless code collaboration and agent deployment.

Logic Apps Agent Triggers

Automatically invoke agents in response to events like new emails or customer tickets using Azure Logic Apps integration. Enable real-time automation and responsiveness across your business processes.

Agent-Specific Tools Expansion

New specialized tools include Bing Custom Search for grounding agents with web data and Morningstar integration for investment research—expanding the capabilities of deployed agents across industries.

Azure AI Search Multi-Vector & Semantic Enhancements

Azure AI Search introduces multi-vector field support for nested complex fields and scoring profiles integration with semantic ranking. Handle multimodal datasets, segment long documents into searchable chunks, and maintain precise relevance with enhanced ranking that carries scoring boosts through the final reranked results.

Reinforcement Fine-Tuning for o4-mini

Reinforcement fine-tuning capabilities arrive for the o4-mini model, enabling highly tailored and efficient model customization for specialized reasoning tasks and agentic applications.

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Platform (API, SDK, UI, and more)

New Azure AI Foundry Resource Type & Projects

The Azure AI Foundry resource unifies agents, models, and tools under a single management grouping with built-in enterprise-readiness capabilities. Foundry projects within these resources are secure folders that enable developers to independently create new environments for exploring ideas and building prototypes while managing data in isolation. Features include integrated tracing & monitoring, agent and model-specific evaluation capabilities, and customizable enterprise setup configurations with new onboarding wizards that accelerate configuration with virtual network support and organizational policy compliance—enabling developer self-service within established IT governance frameworks while making enterprise adoption faster and more secure.

Simplified API Version Management with latest and preview

Azure OpenAI now supports next-generation v1 APIs that eliminate the need to constantly update API versions. Developers can now use latest for stable features and preview for cutting-edge capabilities—no more monthly version updates or environment variable changes. The new approach also supports standard OpenAI client libraries with minimal code changes, making it easier to switch between OpenAI and Azure OpenAI implementations.

Unified Azure AI Foundry SDK

The Azure AI Foundry Projects client library provides a unified development experience that consolidates multiple client libraries into a single endpoint connection. Developers can now access Foundry Models (including Azure OpenAI), Agent Service, cloud evaluations, tracing capabilities, and external resource connections through one comprehensive SDK—eliminating the complexity of managing separate libraries and enabling seamless integration across the entire AI development lifecycle. Recent updates to the Azure.AI.Agents.Persistent SDK (v1.1.0-beta.2) include Bing Custom Search tool, SharePoint grounding tool, Microsoft Fabric tool, and improved file upload handling for non-ASCII filenames.

Global Fine-Tuning Training Capabilities

Enhanced global training for fine-tuning enables distributed datasets and multi-region support for AI model customization—lowering operational costs while improving performance even with smaller models.

Voice Live API (Public Beta)

The new Voice Live API enables developers to build low-latency, multimodal voice experiences with streamlined speech-to-speech conversations. Consolidate transcription, inference, and text-to-speech into a single API call via WebSocket connections, supporting real-time voice interactions with built-in noise suppression, echo cancellation, and function calling capabilities.

Model Safety Leaderboards (Public Preview)

Safety leaderboards within Foundry model leaderboards help incorporate model safety as a first-class criterion alongside quality, cost, and throughput. Features include dedicated safety rankings using HarmBench benchmarks across 7 harmful content categories, quality-safety trade-off charts, and scenario-specific leaderboards for toxic content detection and sensitive domain knowledge—essential for regulated industries like healthcare, education, and financial services.

Enhanced Responses API with New Capabilities

The Responses API gains powerful new features including MCP tool calling support for interoperability with external agent frameworks, image generation integration with gpt-image-1, background mode for long-running tasks, enhanced reasoning controls with tunable effort levels, and improved text prompting with developer role hierarchy. These updates streamline agentic application development by combining simplicity with advanced capabilities in a single API.

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Happy building—and let us know what you ship with #AzureAIFoundry!