By Alice Chambers |
Microsoft has unveiled new tools and features to help developers build AI agents and contribute to the open agentic web at Microsoft Build, taking place on 19-22 May 2025.
“Our goal is simple: help every developer build apps and agents that empower people and organisations everywhere,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO at Microsoft.
To do this, Microsoft is integrating an asynchronous coding agent directly into GitHub so developers can experiment with models without leaving the platform. The agent can help to fix bugs, build new features or manage ongoing code maintenance, all autonomously.
Plus, Windows AI Foundry offers a unified and reliable platform to support AI developers through training and inference. Developers can manage and run open-source large language models via Foundry Local or bring a proprietary model to convert and deploy across client and cloud.
“Foundry is the complete app platform for building apps and agents,” said Nadella. “We are adding support for more models from Grok, Hugging Face, Meta, Mistral and more.”
Developers can now choose from more than 1,900 partner-hosted and Microsoft-hosted AI models to securely manage data, model customisation and governance.
Additionally, general availability of Azure AI Foundry Agent Service means developers have access to multiple specalised agents to handle complex tasks and new features in Azure AI Foundry Observability provides an overview of metrics for performance, quality, cost and safety.
Microsoft is also helping AI tools work more securely and easily with your data by supporting a new open standard called Model Context Protocol, which lets apps and assistants access trusted services like files or subscriptions using existing sign-ins. It’s also launching NLWeb, a new way for websites to talk directly with AI, making web content easier to use through natural conversation.