GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry: The future of AI apps and agents starts here

Microsoft has announced the general availability of OpenAI’s new flagship model, GPT-5, in Azure AI Foundry. This release signifies a major advancement, positioning GPT-5 as the most powerful large language model (LLM) to date across key benchmarks. The focus for business leaders and developers has evolved beyond basic chat functionalities. The new benchmark for AI is its ability to generate, reason, and deliver tangible outcomes—safely and at scale. GPT-5 within Azure AI Foundry integrates cutting-edge reasoning capabilities with high-performance generation and cost efficiency, all powered by Microsoft Azure's enterprise-grade infrastructure. This combination allows organizations to confidently transition from pilot projects to full-scale production deployments.

GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry: Built for real-world workloads

The GPT-5 family is accessible through an API and managed by the model router in Azure AI Foundry. This suite includes:

• GPT-5: A comprehensive reasoning model equipped with deep analytical capabilities for complex tasks like code generation, supporting an extensive 272k token context window.
• GPT-5 mini: Designed for real-time applications and agents that require reasoning and tool calling to effectively resolve customer issues.
• GPT-5 nano: A new, ultra-low-latency reasoning model optimized for speed and efficient Q&A operations.
• GPT-5 chat: Enables natural, multimodal, and multi-turn conversations with a 128k token context, ensuring consistent context awareness throughout agent workflows.
Collectively, these models offer a seamless progression from intricate agentic coding tasks to straightforward Q&A, all accessible via a single Azure AI Foundry endpoint. Under the hood, GPT-5 unifies advanced reasoning, code generation, and natural language interaction. It supports multi-step tool usage and long action chains with transparent, auditable decision-making processes. As a frontier-level coding model, GPT-5 can meticulously plan complex workflows, execute code migrations, refactor existing code, and generate tests and documentation with clear justifications. Developers have the flexibility to tune parameters such as reasoning_effort and verbosity to achieve the desired balance between depth, speed, and detail. New freeform tool-calling features enhance tool compatibility without requiring rigid schemas.

Orchestrate with the model router—then scale with agents

The introduction of GPT-5 to Azure AI Foundry represents more than just a model update; it's a platform evolution. The model router intelligently assesses each prompt to select the optimal model based on task complexity, performance requirements, and cost efficiency, potentially saving up to 60% on inferencing costs without compromising quality. Orchestration capabilities also extend to agents. GPT-5 will soon be integrated into the Foundry Agent Service, combining frontier models with built-in tools like browser automation and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. This will empower policy-governed, tool-using agents capable of performing web searches, interacting with web applications, and completing end-to-end tasks, all while upholding Microsoft's Responsible AI principles.

Accelerating business impact with GPT-5

The advanced capabilities of GPT-5 translate directly into significant business value:
• Research and knowledge work: Accelerates financial and legal analysis, market intelligence gathering, and due diligence processes through scalable reading and traceable, decision-ready outputs.
• Operations and decisioning: Enhances logistics support, risk assessment, and claims processing by combining robust reasoning with strict policy adherence.
• Copilots and customer experience: Powers multi-turn, multimodal agents that perform real-time reasoning, utilize tools, resolve tasks, and escalate to human agents with comprehensive context.
• Software engineering: Excels in code generation, application modernization, and quality engineering, improving code style and explanations to expedite review cycles.
• Cost- and latency-sensitive use cases: GPT-5 nano delivers ultra-low-latency, high-accuracy responses, making it ideal for fine-tuning and high-volume, straightforward requests.

GPT-5 customer spotlight

SAP

"SAP is excited to be among the first to leverage the power of GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry within our generative AI hub in AI Foundation. GPT-5 will enable our product team and developer community to deliver impactful business innovations to our customers."

—Dr. Walter Sun, SVP and Global Head of AI, SAP SE

Relativity

"GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry raises the bar for putting legal data intelligence into action. This next-generation AI empowers legal teams to uncover deeper insights, accelerate decision-making, and drive stronger strategies across the entire legal process."

—Dr. Aron Ahmadia, Senior Director, Applied Science, Relativity

Hebbia

"The partnership between Hebbia and Azure AI Foundry gives financial professionals an unprecedented edge. GPT-5’s advanced reasoning enables pinpointing critical figures across thousands of documents and structuring complex financial analysis with speed and accuracy."

—Danny Wheller, VP of Business and Strategy

Building with AI in GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code

GPT-5 is rolling out today to millions of developers utilizing GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code. The model's advanced reasoning capabilities enhance increasingly complex coding tasks, from sophisticated refactoring to navigating extensive codebases. Developers will benefit from faster, higher-quality code generation, testing, and deployment. GPT-5 supports agentic coding tasks with improvements in coding style and overall code quality. The latest VS Code release enhances the agentic coding experience with GitHub Copilot's improved autonomous task handling and chat features, supporting over 128 tools per request and chat checkpoints for restoring workspace states. An updated Azure AI Foundry extension for VS Code also enables developers to build agents directly within the editor, furthering Microsoft's vision to transform software development with AI across its entire lifecycle.

Security, safety, and governance by design

Security and safety are fundamental to AI deployment. The core GPT-5 model offers enhanced safety compared to previous versions:

"The Microsoft AI Red Team found GPT-5 to have one of the strongest safety profiles of any OpenAI model, performing on par with—or better than—o3."

—Dr. Sarah Bird, Chief Product Officer of Responsible AI, Microsoft

Azure AI Foundry further strengthens security with multiple governance layers:
• Azure AI Content Safety provides protections such as prompt shields to detect and mitigate prompt-injection attempts.
• Built-in agent evaluators and the AI Red Teaming Agent conduct alignment, bias, and security tests during development and production phases.
• Continuous evaluation streams real-time metrics (latency, quality, safety, fairness) into Azure Monitor and Application Insights.
• Security signals integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
• Runtime metadata and evaluation results feed into Microsoft Purview for auditing, data-loss prevention, and regulatory reporting.
These integrated layers ensure protection and governance throughout the entire GPT-5 lifecycle.

Start building today

GPT-5 is available through the Standard offering in Azure AI Foundry, with deployment options optimized for cost efficiency and governance, including Global and Data Zone (United States, European Union) options for data residency and compliance. Leveraging Azure AI Foundry's reliability, real-time evaluations, observability, and secure deployment capabilities, organizations can confidently scale their AI initiatives from pilot to production. Tools like the Model Router uniquely optimize quality, latency, and cost across diverse workloads.

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Originally published at Microsoft Azure Blog on August 7, 2025.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

GPT-5 and Azure AI Foundry Capabilities

Q: What is GPT-5 and what makes it significant? A: GPT-5 is OpenAI's new flagship large language model, now generally available in Azure AI Foundry. It's significant because it represents a major leap in AI capabilities, achieving the highest performance on key benchmarks and offering advanced reasoning, generation, and cost-efficiency. Q: How does GPT-5 differ from previous models? A: GPT-5 offers enhanced reasoning, higher generation performance, and cost efficiency. It supports a significantly larger context window (up to 272k tokens for GPT-5) and introduces specialized models like GPT-5 mini and nano for different application needs, alongside GPT-5 chat for multimodal conversations. Q: What is Azure AI Foundry? A: Azure AI Foundry is Microsoft's enterprise-grade platform on Azure that hosts and orchestrates AI models, including OpenAI's GPT-5 family. It provides the infrastructure for developing, deploying, and managing AI applications and agents at scale. Q: What are the different models within the GPT-5 family available in Azure AI Foundry? A: The GPT-5 family includes GPT-5 (full reasoning, 272k context), GPT-5 mini (real-time applications, tool calling), GPT-5 nano (ultra-low latency Q&A), and GPT-5 chat (multimodal, multi-turn conversations, 128k context). Q: How does the model router in Azure AI Foundry work? A: The model router intelligently selects the most appropriate GPT-5 model for a given prompt based on task complexity, performance needs, and cost efficiency, aiming to save costs while maintaining quality.

Business and Developer Benefits

Q: How can businesses benefit from GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry? A: Businesses can leverage GPT-5 for accelerated research and knowledge work, enhanced operations and decisioning, improved copilot and customer experience applications, and streamlined software engineering processes. Q: What are the advantages for developers using GPT-5? A: Developers gain access to powerful reasoning and generation capabilities, a large context window, tool-using agents, and flexible parameter tuning. Integration with tools like GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code further enhances the development workflow. Q: Can GPT-5 help with code generation and software development? A: Yes, GPT-5 is designed as a frontier-level coding model capable of complex tasks like code generation, refactoring, test generation, and documentation, all with clear rationale.

Security, Safety, and Governance

Q: What security and safety measures are in place for GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry? A: GPT-5 has a strong safety profile, and Azure AI Foundry adds multiple governance layers, including Azure AI Content Safety, AI Red Teaming Agent, continuous evaluation streams, and integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Purview. Q: How does Azure AI Foundry ensure responsible AI deployment? A: Through built-in safety features, continuous evaluation, and adherence to Microsoft's Responsible AI principles, ensuring AI is developed and deployed ethically and safely.

Deployment and Access

Q: How can I start using GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry? A: GPT-5 is available via the Standard offering in Azure AI Foundry, with options for global deployment and data residency in the United States and European Union. Q: What are the cost and performance benefits? A: The model router can save up to 60% on inferencing costs. Specialized models like GPT-5 nano are optimized for cost and latency-sensitive applications.

Crypto Market AI's Take

The integration of GPT-5 into Azure AI Foundry marks a significant milestone in the evolution of AI for enterprise applications. For those in the cryptocurrency space, this advancement has profound implications. The enhanced reasoning and generation capabilities of GPT-5 can be harnessed to develop more sophisticated AI trading bots and advanced market analysis tools. This means potentially more accurate predictions, more efficient execution of trading strategies, and better risk management for digital assets. Furthermore, the ability to process vast amounts of data and understand complex contexts is crucial for navigating the volatile cryptocurrency market. Companies utilizing platforms like ours can expect to see improvements in the intelligence and automation of their trading operations, leading to potentially greater efficiency and returns.

More to Read:

• AI Agents: Are They Broken? Can GPT-5 Fix Them?
• AI-Driven Crypto Trading Tools Reshape Market Strategies in 2025
• Understanding Cryptocurrency Ledgers: The Backbone of Blockchain