What's New in Microsoft Foundry | April 2026

[nicholasdbrady]

The April digest is live: What's New in Microsoft Foundry | April 2026

Models

• GPT-5.5 — default quota for Tier 5 and Tier 6. Below that, you'll need to request quota first.
• GPT-image-2 (Preview) — 4K resolution, editing, up to 10 images per request
• MAI-Image-2 / MAI-Image-2e (Preview) — first-party image gen. MAI-Image-2e is up to 22% faster at the same quality.
• MAI-Voice-1 (Preview) — neural TTS with six prebuilt English voices
• MAI-Transcribe-1 (Preview) — speech recognition via the LLM Speech API
• Gemma 4 — Google DeepMind open-weight, up to 256K context
• Claude Opus 4.7 — Anthropic's most capable GA model

Agents and tools

• Foundry Local GA — on-device inference on Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon), Linux x64
• Agent Framework 1.0 GA — multi-agent orchestration for .NET and Python
• Foundry Toolkit for VS Code GA — model playground, agent builder, one-click deploy
• Agent Framework tracing (Preview) — OTel spans for debugging agent runs
• Hosted-agent tracing (Preview) — server-side trace visibility
• CodeAct with Hyperlight (alpha) — sandboxed Python code execution
• Agent Monitoring Dashboard (Preview) — metrics + eval scores in one view
• Agent inventory in Control Plane — find agents across subscriptions

Evaluations

• Batch evaluations for third-party agents (Preview)
• Custom evaluators in continuous evaluation (Preview)
• Audio and image input in score model grader (Preview)

SDKs

• Python azure-ai-projects 2.1.0 — hosted-agent sessions, skills, toolboxes
• JS/TS @azure/ai-projects 2.1.0 — beta routes + logging fix
• .NET Azure.AI.Projects 2.0.1 — stable 2.0 GA line
• Java azure-ai-projects 2.0.1 — streaming fix

Post has runnable code samples and a full table of Build sessions (June 2-3).

[nicholasdbrady]

Build Foundry sessions

Dates: June 2-3, 2026
Location: San Francisco, CA
Format: Hybrid — in-person + online (sessions available to stream and watch on-demand)
Timezone: Sessions are listed in Pacific Time (PT)
Registration: Free, at build.microsoft.com

Session	Date/time	Speaker(s)	Description
Confident model selection and integration with Microsoft Foundry (BRK230)	June 2, 12:30-1:15 PM PT	Yina Arenas, Naomi Moneypenny	Choose, integrate, and validate AI models in Microsoft Foundry, including benchmarking and integrated developer workflows.
Govern open-source AI agents, any framework, any scale (BRK250)	June 2, 2:30-3:15 PM PT	Sarah Bird, Mehrnoosh Sameki	Learn governance patterns for Microsoft Agent Framework and open-source agent stacks, including evaluations and risk controls.
From prototype to production: build and run agents at scale (BRK241)	June 2, 3:45-4:30 PM PT	Tina Schuchman, Jeff Hollan	Walk through the lifecycle for production-grade agents with Foundry Agent Service and Microsoft Agent Framework.
From observability to ROI for AI agents on any framework (BRK252)	June 2, 3:45-4:30 PM PT	Sebastian Kohlmeier, Filisha Shah	Cover cross-framework tracing, evaluations, production observability, and ROI measurement for AI agents.
Orchestrate special agents with Nemotron models on Microsoft AI Foundry (BRKSP94)	June 2, 3:45-4:30 PM PT	Stephen McCullough	Route tasks across frontier models, NVIDIA Nemotron, and local models for tiered agentic AI architectures.
Deploy. Observe. Learn. Reinforcement learning for production agents (BRK231)	June 2, 5:00-5:45 PM PT	Alicia Frame, Omkar More	Use fine-tuning and reinforcement learning on Microsoft Foundry to improve production agents with real usage signals.
Build context-aware agents at scale with Microsoft IQ (BRK240)	June 2, 5:00-5:45 PM PT	Marco Casalaina	Learn how Foundry IQ, Fabric IQ, and Work IQ provide an enterprise intelligence layer for AI agents.
Context engineering for agents: connect agents with enterprise knowledge (BRK246)	June 3, 9:00-9:45 AM PT	Pablo Castro Castro	Explore Foundry IQ, Azure AI Search, knowledge sources, agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and enterprise security.
Local models, developer control, and the future of AI runtimes (BRK235)	June 3, 10:15-11:00 AM PT	Parth Sareen	Learn how local and hybrid model execution can reshape developer workflows, privacy, and experimentation.
Claw and agent harness in Microsoft Foundry (BRK243)	June 3, 11:30 AM-12:15 PM PT	Glenn Condron, Amanda Foster, Shawn Henry	Go deep on multi-agent systems, Claw agent patterns, hosted agents architecture, triggers, state management, and file access.
Build secure and enterprise-ready agents with Agent 365 (BRK251)	June 3, 11:30 AM-12:15 PM PT	Neta Haiby	Build enterprise-ready agents with runtime visibility, identity-aware access, data protection, and policy-based governance.
Build distributed agentic apps from edge to cloud (BRKSP92)	June 3, 11:30 AM-12:15 PM PT	Colin Helms, Eddy Rodriguez	Design and run multi-agent applications across client, edge, and Azure environments.
Train and deploy custom OSS reasoning models with Foundry (BRK232)	June 3, 2:45-3:30 PM PT	Vijay Aski, Manoj Bableshwar, Chris Lauren	Train and tune open-source reasoning models in Microsoft Foundry with code-first workflows and curated reinforcement learning environments.
Turn your agents into action: connect tools, APIs, and data (BRK242)	June 3, 4:00-4:45 PM PT	Ronak Chokshi, Joe Filcik, Maria Naggaga	See how to connect agents with toolsets, application programming interfaces (APIs), and data without overloading context windows.