August 8, 2025
5 min read
Steve Sweetman
Microsoft announces GPT-5 general availability in Azure AI Foundry, delivering powerful AI reasoning, coding, and agent orchestration at scale.
GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry: The future of AI apps and agents starts here
Microsoft has announced the general availability of OpenAI’s flagship model, GPT-5, in Azure AI Foundry. This release signifies more than just a new model; GPT-5 stands as the most powerful large language model (LLM) released to date across key benchmarks, integrating frontier reasoning capabilities with high-performance generation and cost efficiency.GPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry: Built for real-world workloads
GPT-5 models are now accessible via API and orchestrated by the model router within Azure AI Foundry. The GPT-5 family comprises several models designed for diverse applications:- GPT-5: This is a full reasoning model equipped with deep analytical capabilities, making it ideal for complex tasks such as code generation. It supports an extensive context window of 272k tokens.
- GPT-5 mini: Tailored for real-time app and agent experiences, this model excels in reasoning and tool utilization to address customer problems.
- GPT-5 nano: Designed for scenarios where ultra-low latency and speed are paramount, this model offers rich Q&A capabilities, perfectly suited for cost- and latency-sensitive use cases.
- GPT-5 chat: This model enables natural, multimodal, multi-turn conversations with a 128k token context, consistently maintaining context awareness throughout agent workflows. Collectively, these models provide a seamless spectrum of capabilities, from intricate agentic coding tasks to straightforward Q&A, all accessible through a single Azure AI Foundry endpoint. GPT-5 unifies advanced reasoning, code generation, and natural language interaction, facilitating multi-step tool use and extended action chains with transparent, auditable decision-making. It distinguishes itself as a frontier-level coding model capable of planning complex workflows, executing code migrations, refactoring code, and generating tests and documentation with clear rationale. Developer controls, such as
- Research and knowledge work: It accelerates financial and legal analysis, market intelligence gathering, and due diligence processes by enabling scalable reading and providing decision-ready output.
- Operations and decisioning: GPT-5 enhances logistics support, risk assessment, and claims processing through robust reasoning and policy adherence.
- Copilots and customer experience: It powers multi-turn, multimodal agents that reason in real-time, utilize tools, resolve tasks, and escalate to human agents with rich contextual information.
- Software engineering: The model excels in code generation, application modernization, and quality engineering, improving code style and compressing review cycles.
- Cost- and latency-sensitive use cases: GPT-5 nano delivers rapid, high-accuracy responses, making it ideal for high-volume, straightforward requests.
- The Microsoft AI Red Team has identified GPT-5 as having one of the strongest safety profiles among OpenAI models, performing on par with or exceeding previous versions.
- Azure AI Content Safety implements protective measures, such as prompt shields, to detect and mitigate prompt-injection attempts.
- Integrated agent evaluators and the AI Red Teaming Agent continuously run alignment, bias, and security tests, streaming real-time metrics into Azure Monitor and Application Insights.
- Security signals are integrated with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, while runtime metadata and evaluation results feed into Microsoft Purview for auditing, data-loss prevention, and regulatory reporting.
- AI Agents are Broken: Can GPT-5 Fix Them? - Explore the potential of GPT-5 to overcome current limitations in AI agents.
- The Future of AI Apps and Agents - Dive deeper into the technological landscape of AI applications and agent development.
- AI Crypto Trading Bots: Revolutionizing Your Investment Strategy - Learn how AI-powered trading bots are reshaping the way investors approach the crypto market.
reasoning_effort and verbosity settings, allow for fine-tuning of depth, speed, and detail, while new freeform tool-calling features enhance tool compatibility beyond rigid schemas.
Orchestrate with the model router—then scale with agents
The integration of GPT-5 into Azure AI Foundry represents a significant platform advancement. The model router intelligently evaluates each prompt and selects the most optimal model based on complexity, performance, and cost efficiency, potentially saving up to 60% on inferencing costs without compromising fidelity. GPT-5 will soon be integrated into the Foundry Agent Service, combining frontier models with built-in tools like browser automation and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This integration will enable policy-governed, tool-using agents capable of web searches, interacting with web applications, and completing end-to-end tasks, all while being instrumented with Foundry telemetry and aligned with Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles.Accelerating business impact with GPT-5
GPT-5's capabilities translate into tangible business benefits across various sectors: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 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 helps pinpoint critical figures across thousands of documents and structure complex financial analysis quickly and accurately."
—Danny Wheller, VP of Business and Strategy
Building with AI in GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code
GPT-5 is being rolled out to millions of developers utilizing GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code. It applies advanced reasoning to complex coding challenges, such as sophisticated refactoring and navigating extensive codebases. GPT-5 assists developers in writing, testing, and deploying code more efficiently and effectively, supporting agentic coding tasks with enhanced style and quality. The latest VS Code release improves the agentic coding experience with an enhanced GitHub Copilot coding agent that autonomously handles background tasks. The Copilot chat experience now supports over 128 tools per chat request and includes chat checkpoints for restoring workspace changes. An updated Azure AI Foundry extension enables developers to build agents directly within VS Code.Security, safety, and governance by design
Microsoft incorporates robust security and safety protections for GPT-5:Start building today
GPT-5 is available through the Standard offering in Azure AI Foundry, featuring deployment options optimized for cost-efficiency and governance, including Global and Data Zone (United States, European Union) options for data residency and compliance. With the reliability, real-time evaluations, observability, and secure deployment capabilities of Azure AI Foundry, organizations can confidently transition from pilot projects to full production. Unique tools like the Model Router further optimize quality, latency, and cost across various workloads.Explore Azure AI Foundry
Design, customize, and manage powerful, adaptable AI agents to get started today. Learn more >Originally published at Microsoft Azure Blog on August 7, 2025.