If you are studying for AI-103 and the naming feels like a moving target, you are not imagining it. Microsoft has renamed its AI platform three times in about two years, and the documentation still carries URLs from older names. This is a short reference to keep the terms straight — and to flag where genuine uncertainty remains.
A note on confidence: platform names change fast. The relationships below are accurate as of early 2026, but if you are reading this later, verify the current term on Microsoft Learn before quoting it in production docs.
The rebrand timeline
- Azure AI Studio — the name introduced at Ignite 2024 for Microsoft's unified build-and-deploy surface for generative AI.
- Azure AI Foundry — the next name, positioning the platform as a "foundry" for building AI apps and agents (project-centric, with a model catalog, deployments, and evaluations).
- Microsoft Foundry — the current name (as of early 2026). Docs now live under
learn.microsoft.com/azure/foundry/.
The through-line across all three: a project-centric platform for selecting models, deploying them, grounding them, evaluating them, and building agents. The capabilities were largely continuous; the brand kept moving.
Why ai.azure.com URLs still work
The portal domain — ai.azure.com — dates from the Azure AI Studio / Azure AI Foundry era and persists even though the product is now "Microsoft Foundry." This is normal: Microsoft (like most vendors) keeps stable URLs working through rebrands to avoid breaking bookmarks, tutorials, and deep links. So do not be thrown when the current Microsoft Foundry portal still lives at an ai.azure.com address. URL ≠ current brand name.
Foundry Tools vs Foundry Agent Service vs Foundry IQ
Three terms candidates constantly confuse:
Foundry Tools
Foundry Tools is the current umbrella for the prebuilt, point-solution APIs: Language, Vision, Speech, Document Intelligence, Translator, and Content Understanding. This is the successor term to what was Azure AI Services, and before that Azure Cognitive Services. Mental model: Foundry Tools are capabilities your app or agent calls — a captioning call, a translation call, an OCR call.
Foundry Agent Service
Foundry Agent Service is the managed agent runtime and orchestration service — the successor to Azure AI Agent Service. It is where you define agents (roles, goals, memory, tool schemas), wire in retrieval and function calling, and run single or multi-agent workflows. Mental model: Foundry Agent Service runs the agents; the agents call Foundry Tools.
The classic exam trap: an answer choice offers "Foundry Tools" where the correct answer is "Foundry Agent Service" (or vice versa). Anchor on the verb — are you calling a capability (Tools) or running an agent (Agent Service)?
Foundry IQ
Foundry IQ is a newer (Build 2026) knowledge/retrieval layer built on top of Azure AI Search. It is very new and preview-adjacent, so treat it with caution: the AI-103 objectives still use plain "semantic / vector / hybrid search," not Foundry IQ. Know the term exists, but do not over-index your study on it.
What did not get renamed
Helpfully, a few core names have been stable:
- Azure AI Search — the retrieval/indexing engine (semantic, vector, hybrid). Still the documented name in the exam objectives.
- Azure AI Document Intelligence — OCR, layout, and field extraction. The name persists even though it is marketed as part of Azure Content Understanding.
- Azure OpenAI — the model service, now consumed in Foundry.
For the retrieval side specifically, see our deep dive on semantic vs vector vs hybrid search.
Quick reference table
| Term | What it is | Legacy name |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Foundry | The platform (projects, catalog, deployments, evals) | Azure AI Foundry / Azure AI Studio |
| Foundry Tools | Prebuilt point-solution APIs (Language, Vision, Speech, Doc Intelligence, Translator, Content Understanding) | Azure AI Services / Cognitive Services |
| Foundry Agent Service | Managed agent runtime and orchestration | Azure AI Agent Service |
| Azure AI Search | Retrieval engine (semantic / vector / hybrid) | (unchanged) |
| Foundry IQ | New knowledge/retrieval layer on Azure AI Search | (new, preview-adjacent) |
ai.azure.com | Portal URL that survived the rebrands | — |
Bottom line
The safest exam heuristic: prefer the current Microsoft Foundry naming in answers, treat Foundry Tools as "capabilities you call" and Foundry Agent Service as "the runtime that runs agents," keep Azure AI Search as the retrieval engine, and treat Foundry IQ as an emerging term rather than a core objective. Ready for the full exam? Start with the AI-103 exam guide, the certification study guide, and the learning pathway.
For a current model-catalog example, see MAI-Thinking-1 in Microsoft Foundry public preview, including the difference between a Direct from Azure model, its Chat Completions interface and the application-owned agent harness.
Platform names change frequently; relationships described here are accurate as of early 2026. Verify current terminology on Microsoft Learn. explainx.ai is not affiliated with Microsoft.