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Developers gathering cause fleets support hitting the aforesaid pattern: the cause logic is ready, but the cognition infrastructure underneath is analyzable to bash well. Getting to accumulation means solving for stability, scale, information access, reply quality, security, and contented ingestion each astatine once. Today, we are enabling developers to person faster interaction by simplifying the endeavor cognition platform.
Your company’s IQ, powered by Microsoft IQ, is the corporate quality locked successful documents, emails, meetings, operational data, and the unrecorded web. This is wherever your existent competitory borderline lives. Foundry IQ grounds agents with the cognition from these sources and continuously improves based connected your concern goals.
The announcements contiguous are designed to assistance customers proviso cognition bases faster, unify endeavor and outer sources, and exposure that cognition done the Foundry IQ Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for immoderate cause model oregon MCP-compatible hosts.
What’s new
- Foundry IQ Serverless successful preview: Provision instant, no-friction discourse retrieval with standard to zero pricing. Developer tier present disposable successful nationalist preview with much coming soon. Docs | Create a Foundry IQ resource
- New cognition sources successful preview: Ground agents crossed Work IQ, Fabric IQ (including Data agents and Ontology), File Search, Azure SQL, and MCP done a multi-source cognition base, with nary customized integrations required. Docs | Cookbook
- Web IQ successful Foundry IQ is present available: Extend cause discourse to the web, honoring steadfast preferences, and marketplace information with sub-165 sclerosis latency and zero information retention. Blog | Website
- Foundry IQ cognition bases are mostly available: Ship accumulation agents connected a afloat SLA-backed cognition furniture with unchangeable APIs, compliance certifications, and the Foundry IQ MCP server for immoderate MCP-compatible host. Docs | Quickstart
- Agentic retrieval prime improvements: The latest updates to the agentic retrieval motor amended reply show crossed datasets, effort tiers, and exemplary sizes portion spending less tokens. Blog | Quickstart
- Data pipeline updates successful preview: Automatic layout-aware ingestion of documents, representation enrichment, and broader SharePoint indexing crushed agents successful implicit documents, not conscionable earthy text. Blog | Quickstart
- Security updates successful preview: New controls for encryption, permissions sync, and sensitivity-label governance support endeavor argumentation intact arsenic contented flows into agents. Blog | Quickstart
Foundry IQ Serverless successful nationalist preview
We cognize cause workloads are bursty and event-driven: an cause mightiness execute hundreds of steps successful seconds, past spell idle for hours. Serverless eliminates infrastructure friction: nary clusters to manage, nary capableness to reserve, nary idle costs. Go from zero to accumulation fast, with instant retrieval-augmented procreation (RAG) and state-of-the-art retrieval prime built in.
Foundry IQ Serverless (Developer tier) is disposable successful nationalist preview. You are billed for compute resources and retention used, and the work scales to zero erstwhile idle.
Serverless tiers usage Compute Units (CU) to measurement assets consumption, including CPU utilization, representation and retention I/O. Usage is calculated each infinitesimal successful increments of 0.25 CUs.
For large-scale serverless deployments, contact us for further options.
| Compute usage | $0.24 CU / hour |
| Indexed storage | Up to $0.29 GB / month; GB outgo is portion dependent |
| Indexed retention per index | 1 GB / index |
| Indexes per service | 30 indexes / service |
| Services per subscription per region | 5 services / subscription / region |
Billing is expected to statesman successful precocious 2026 with details provided astatine slightest 30 days successful advance. Customers utilizing Serverless Developer won’t beryllium charged earlier billing is enabled. Current Compute Unit measurements are estimates lone and taxable to alteration earlier billing is enabled.
Next steps: create a Foundry IQ Serverless resource in the Foundry portal.
New cognition sources successful preview
How bash I springiness an cause entree to organizational cognition and structured concern information without gathering a customized connector for each system?
Bringing endeavor cognition into cause workflows often means stitching unneurotic customized integrations crossed each information source. Developers indispensable relationship for antithetic information formats, support models, retrieval patterns, and source-specific logic earlier an cause could reliably usage that knowledge.
Foundry IQ simplifies this by bringing endeavor contented and structured systems into a azygous cognition basal for multi-source, agentic retrieval. Developers tin springiness agents entree to that cognition without gathering and maintaining abstracted connectors oregon source-specific retrieval strategies.
New cognition sources successful preview:
- Work IQ brings organizational signals similar emails, meetings, files, and Teams messages into 1 enriched, AI-ready source, each portion respecting idiosyncratic permissions. Agents tin reply questions astir however the enactment operates, what decisions were made, and what is apical of caput for teams.
- Fabric IQ lets agents query information agents and institution ontologies: ceremonial models of concern entities, relationships, and rules linked to unrecorded information successful OneLake and a specialized semantic layer. This returns structured answers alongside unstructured papers discourse for a query.
- File Search allows you to straight upload files to a cognition base.
- Azure SQL brings structured relational information into a cognition base.
- MCP Server connects cognition served implicit the Model Context Protocol.
Next steps: usage the Foundry IQ Forgebook to effort retired further cognition sources.
Microsoft Web IQ successful Foundry IQ present available
When an reply needs fresh, real-world context, however bash I scope the unfastened web without paying a latency oregon compliance penalty?
Microsoft Web IQ is disposable successful constricted entree done the Foundry IQ MCP cognition source. It gives agents entree to outer retrieval crossed web, news, images, video, and buying sources portion honoring steadfast preferences. It is designed for ample connection exemplary (LLM) workflows alternatively than accepted hunt pages, with industry-leading low-latency ranking.
Combined with Foundry IQ, agents tin plan, search, reason, and synthesize answers that gully connected some interior cognition and real-world outer discourse successful 1 retrieval engine.
Next steps: work the blog announcement for Microsoft Web IQ.
Knowledge bases successful Foundry IQ are mostly available
What does it really instrumentality to determination a prototype into production?
Production means guarantees: unchangeable contracts, predictable performance, and information that holds nether audit. Foundry IQ cognition bases and prime cognition sources, and information capabilities are mostly available: with afloat SLA coverage, compliance certifications, unchangeable APIs, and enterprise-grade web isolation with individuality and argumentation enforced by default.
What is included successful GA:
- Knowledge bases: agentic retrieval references, output and enactment logs, the Foundry IQ MCP server, and minimal retrieval reasoning effort.
- Foundry IQ MCP server: exposes Foundry IQ cognition bases arsenic a distant MCP server, making them accessible from immoderate MCP-compatible big oregon client, including Claude, ChatGPT, LangChain, and the Microsoft Agent Framework. Network isolation, document-level security, cross-source ranking, and agentic retrieval each enactment implicit the unfastened MCP standard, making it disposable for the broader cause ecosystem.
- Knowledge sources: Azure Blob Storage (with a presumption API to cheque indexing progress), hunt indexes, Web, and OneLake.
- Security: network isolation and managed individuality support.
“We’ve been utilizing Foundry IQ successful our probe and prototyping work, and the reusable cognition basal attack has chopped a batch of the setup overhead we’d usually expect. Being capable to crushed agents successful trusted endeavor contented from time one, without rebuilding retrieval logic each time, has made early-stage experimentation noticeably faster and higher quality.” — Jane Chen, Lead AI Developer, Baringa Partners
Next steps: usage the Mastering Foundry IQ cookbook to get started gathering with the Foundry IQ MCP server.
Agentic retrieval prime improvements
The latest retrieval enhancements improved our reply prime benchmarks by up to 20%, crossed our evaluated datasets, effort tiers, and exemplary sizes. Compared to single-shot RAG, cognition bases improved callback by up to 54%.
Foundry IQ improved its iterative agentic retrieval loop to batch queries much effectively, aboveground much applicable passages via semantic ranker, and use server-side token caching to trim redundant depletion crossed multi-turn conversations. This results successful meaningfully less tokens spent without sacrificing reply quality, portion beating erstwhile benchmarks connected reply quality.
Next steps: read our blog for much connected the latest evaluations and Foundry IQ benchmarks.
Security updates successful preview
How bash I support endeavor information permissions intact arsenic contented flows into agents?
Security belongs astatine the information layer, not approximated successful exertion code. Several information capabilities are present successful preview, including cross-tenant customer-managed keys (CMK) utilizing federated individuality credentials — eliminating shared secrets — Purview sensitivity-label auditing, incremental SharePoint permissions sync, APIM enactment for Foundry exemplary integrations, and surfacing Purview sensitivity labels wrong cognition sources truthful label-based entree controls are honored extremity to end.
Private connectivity betwixt Foundry IQ and Foundry products, via Shared Private Link and Network Security Perimeter, is mostly available.
“By integrating Foundry IQ, we supply a managed, permission-aware concern discourse furniture that connects selling and marque cognition into each cause truthful they tin entree the close information, astatine the close time, with the close governance.” — Andrei Pop, Director of PM, Innovation, Sitecore
Next steps: read more about the latest Foundry IQ information announcements.
Data pipeline updates successful preview
How bash I marque definite agents are grounded successful the full papers (tables, diagrams, and images) not conscionable the earthy text?
Ingestion prime sets the ceiling connected retrieval quality. New information pipeline capabilities successful preview see first-class SharePoint indexing for ASPX pages and Lists alongside papers libraries and papers enrichment to process images positive service them astatine query clip successful cognition bases, truthful agents and users tin notation archetypal visuals and inquire follow-up questions astir them. We are besides introducing Azure Content Understanding chunking with representation verbalization — a layout-aware ingestion pipeline that converts diagrams, charts, and scanned images into meaningful substance truthful agents are grounded successful complete, semantically close representations of root documents.
Next steps: work Foundry IQ’s information pipeline deep dive blog post.
Get started today
Build once, reuse everywhere: Foundry IQ enables you to crushed aggregate agents with the aforesaid cognition base, connecting and unifying information from anywhere. Foundry IQ is designed for cause workloads to present amended results from your company’s IQ. With Foundry IQ, accelerate cause delivery, present discourse without unsighted spots, and guarantee each reply respects your organization’s information by default.
The easiest mode to research Foundry IQ is done the Microsoft Foundry portal. From determination you tin make a cognition base, entree the documentation, and travel the Microsoft Foundry Learn courses, each successful a fewer clicks.
Be definite to cheque retired the latest quality from Foundry IQ astatine Microsoft Build 2026:
- BRK246: Foundry IQ: Fuel agents with endeavor cognition and agentic retrieval
- LAB532: From information to context: agent-ready cognition with Foundry IQ
- BRK240: Build context-aware agents: From information to decisions with Microsoft IQ
- DEM331: Turn APIs, tools, and information into existent cause velocity
The station Foundry IQ: Build smarter agents faster with unified cognition and serverless retrieval appeared archetypal connected Microsoft Azure Blog.