Microsoft Build 2025 showcased how Microsoft is reimagining the software development lifecycle with powerful new capabilities that redefine what’s possible with AI.
From streamlining enterprise workflows to accelerating scientific discovery, AI agents are transforming how developers build and how businesses operate.
- 15 million developers are using GitHub Copilot, using features like agent mode and code review to handle repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on the fun, creative parts of software development.
- Hundreds of thousands of customers are using Microsoft 365 Copilot to assist with research, brainstorming, and solution development, allowing increased for efficiency.
- More than 230,000 organizations—including 90% of the Fortune 500—have used Microsoft Copilot Studio to build AI agents and automations to improve productivity and scale business quickly.
- More than 11,000 AI models are now available through Azure AI Foundry, including Microsoft-hosted and partner-hosted models. This extensive library of AI models provides unparalleled resources for organizations to innovate and scale their AI-powered solutions.
In this edition of FYAI, a series where we dive deep on AI trends with Microsoft leaders, we hear from Yina Arenas, Vice President of Product, Azure AI Foundry, who is leading the work at Microsoft to empower every developer to shape the future with generative AI using breakthrough models and enterprise AI agents.
In this Q&A, Yina shares her insights on the shifting AI landscape, including why businesses are getting stuck in the “proof of concept” phase and how Azure AI Foundry can meet organizations where they are and take their AI projects to the next level.
What shifts in the AI landscape are you seeing that are fundamentally changing how people—and organizations—build and scale AI?
We’re seeing a profound shift from AI as a research experiment to AI as a core business capability. What’s exciting—and challenging—is that organizations are no longer just asking, “Can we build this?” but “How do we build this responsibly, at scale, and with real impact?” That shift requires new tools, new mindsets, and new ways of working across teams. At Microsoft, we’re focused on making AI more accessible and inclusive—so that everyone, from developers to domain experts, can contribute to building solutions that matter. It’s not just about the tech—it’s about empowering people to solve real problems with AI.
Why is it still so hard for businesses to move from experimentation to production with AI—and what needs to change to unlock that next wave of value?
Azure AI Foundry is supporting open Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol
Many organizations get stuck in the “proof of concept” phase because the leap to production is complex. It’s not just about selecting the right model—it’s about integrating it into systems, ensuring it’s secure and responsible, and aligning it with business goals. What’s missing is a cohesive, end-to-end approach that brings together the right tools, governance, and collaboration in a developer-friendly environment. That’s where Azure AI Foundry comes in—it’s designed to help teams not only move faster but do so thoughtfully by providing a cohesive end-to-end platform and offering traceability across prompts, models, and runtime behavior. We’re making it easier and less complex for developers to build apps while also giving business decision makers the ability to see how these apps perform, measure their ROI, and meet compliance requirements. To unlock the next wave of value, we need to make AI development more collaborative, transparent, and outcome-driven.
How does Azure AI Foundry help bridge that gap—and how is it different from other approaches out there?
Azure AI Foundry is built to meet organizations where they are—whether they’re just starting or scaling AI across the enterprise. It brings together the best of Microsoft’s AI capabilities from foundational models to orchestration and monitoring in a unified platform. What sets Azure AI Foundry apart is not only that it’s built on decades of world-class research but that it’s built with humans at the center, so whether you’re a data scientist, product manager, engineer, or business leader, our AI solutions work for you. It also bakes in responsible AI from the start by integrating tools, from testing to monitoring to governance, that support the entire life cycle.
Who is Azure AI Foundry built for, and how does it support cross-functional teams—from data scientists to decision-makers—to build together?
Azure AI Foundry: Your AI App and agent factory
Azure AI Foundry is designed for anyone looking to take their AI projects to the next level—whether you’re part of a big enterprise, a startup, or a software development company. It offers access to the leading frontier models, integrates orchestration frameworks, supports open protocols for multi-agent collaboration, and provides native observability tooling—all within a secure, governed environment. Whether it’s optimizing call centers, analyzing data, improving product searches, or automating workflows, Azure AI Foundry pulls everything—models, tools, and agents—into one user-friendly platform. With tools like GitHub, Visual Studio, and Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry makes it easy for developers, data scientists, IT pros, and decision-makers to shorten the journey from idea to production.
Azure AI Foundry
Design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents at scale.
Where are you seeing Azure AI Foundry already making an impact—and what kinds of transformation are customers unlocking?
As the central hub for building, orchestrating, and managing AI solutions, Azure AI Foundry remains the centerpiece of our AI platform strategy. It is now used by developers at more than 70,000 enterprises and software development companies—including Atomicwork, Epic, Fujitsu, Gainsight, H&R Block, and LG Electronics—to design, customize, and manage their AI apps and agents. And just six months in, more than 10,000 organizations have used Azure AI Foundry Agent Service to build, deploy, and scale their agents. Developers are designing agents that act, reason, take initiative, and deliver measurable business outcomes.
Heineken, for example, used Azure AI Foundry to build a multi-agent platform called “Hoppy” that helps employees access data and tools across the company in their native language. Their implementation has already saved thousands of hours, reducing tasks that once took 20 minutes to just 20 seconds.
Fujitsu evaluated Azure AI Foundry Agent Service to automate sales proposal creation. This boosted productivity by 67%, letting their teams to focus on customer engagement. The AI agent integrates with existing Microsoft tools familiar to around 38,000 employees, retrieves dispersed knowledge, and lays the foundation for broader AI-powered innovation.
Draftwise, a digital native offering an AI-powered contract drafting and review platform, is using cutting edge models in Azure AI Foundry (Cohere multimodal and AOAI reasoning) to help streamline the contract drafting process by integrating with a lawyer’s document storage system.
What excites you most about what’s next—for Azure AI Foundry, and for how people can reimagine the way they work and create with AI?
What excites me most about what’s next for Azure AI Foundry is how it’s unlocking a new era of creativity and empowerment—not just for developers, but for everyone. We’re moving beyond the idea of AI as a tool you use to AI as a copilot you build with. Azure AI Foundry is helping people imagine and create agents that understand their goals, adapt to their workflows, and evolve with their needs.
That shift—from writing code to orchestrating intelligence—is profound. It means that a product manager, a marketer, or a frontline worker can shape how AI works for them, without needing to be a machine learning expert. It’s about putting the power of AI into the hands of the many, not the few.
And what’s most inspiring is that we’re just getting started. The agents people are building today are solving real problems—automating complex processes, accelerating insights, and freeing up time for more meaningful work. But the agents of tomorrow? They’ll be collaborators in creativity, partners in problem-solving, and catalysts for innovation we haven’t even dreamed of yet.
That’s the future I see—and it’s being built right now, by people who are reimagining what’s possible with AI.
Design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents at scale
Through leaders like Yina Arenas, Microsoft’s vision for the future of AI is both inspiring and deeply human-centered. With platforms like Azure AI Foundry, we’re entering a new era where AI becomes not just a tool, but a true collaborator—empowering everyone, regardless of technical expertise, to innovate and solve real-world problems. With Azure AI Foundry, the potential of AI is being unlocked by developers everywhere, sparking a wave of transformation and boundless possibilities.
Interested in learning more? Here are a few resources:
- Build your first production-grade AI agent in under an hour: Azure AI Foundry
- Learn how Azure AI Foundry is supporting open Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol
- Read Azure AI Foundry Agent Service documentation
- Empower your team to grow their AI skills
- FYAI: How agents will transform business and daily work
