AI Foundry: New Hub for AI Application Development

• Azure AI Foundry targets professional developers creating AI-powered applications.
• It provides “playgrounds” where developers can test different combinations of system prompts, LLMs, prompt flows, and architectures before deployment.
• While Azure AI Foundry is free, users will incur charges when using its associated services such as Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, and Azure App Service.

Azure AI Foundry, originally known as Azure AI Studio, is a Web-based development tool for professional developers to create, test, and deploy applications powered by AI language models. Introduced at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Nov. 2024, AI Foundry has received considerable investment and is designed to be the company’s flagship AI applications-development service. AI Foundry competes directly against tools such as AWS Bedrock and Google AI Studio.

This report is the second in a series on Azure AI services that can be used to build AI-enabled applications. The series is designed for technically minded directors and managers who need to understand and evaluate the components, advantages, and limitations of the following services as part of their AI development efforts: