At Build 2026, Microsoft shipped a broad set of updates to Microsoft Foundry positioning it as an enterprise-grade runtime for agentic AI. Key additions include hosted agent infrastructure with sandboxed compute and durable state, Toolboxes for centralized tool governance via MCP, and two governance frameworks: ASSERT (policy-driven evaluation converting written policies into measurable tests) and Agent Control Specification (ACS), a portable YAML contract for deterministic safety controls across agent lifecycles. Memory capabilities now cover procedural, user, and session types, with early benchmarks showing 7–14% success-rate gains. Foundry IQ offers a serverless knowledge layer to replace custom RAG pipelines, and four new first-party MAI models entered preview. Microsoft's thesis is that the enterprise AI competition has shifted from raw capability to reliability, governability, and production-readiness.
