Claude Integration with Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft 365 Copilot

Anthropic and Microsoft have expanded their partnership to integrate Claude models into Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft 365 Copilot. This integration allows enterprise customers to build production applications and agents using Claude's frontier models while remaining within the existing Microsoft ecosystem and billing infrastructure.

Claude Availability in Microsoft Foundry

Claude models are now available in public preview in Microsoft Foundry via serverless deployment. This enables developers to build and scale applications using Foundry's APIs and workflows without managing the underlying infrastructure.

Enterprise Integration and Billing

The integration removes procurement overhead by allowing companies to use their existing Azure agreements. Specifically, Claude is eligible for the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), eliminating the need for separate vendor contracts and billing systems.

Developer Tools and SDKs

Developers can access Claude models in Microsoft Foundry using Python, TypeScript, and C# SDKs, with authentication handled via Microsoft Entra. Additionally, developers can use Claude models in Foundry alongside Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding agent.

Model Selection for Microsoft Foundry

Microsoft customers can choose from three Claude frontier models based on their specific performance and cost requirements:

  • Claude Sonnet 4.5: Designed as the strongest model for building complex agents and autonomous coding tasks, offering state-of-the-art performance on sophisticated reasoning and multi-step agentic workflows.
  • Claude Haiku 4.5: The fastest model in the lineup, providing near-frontier performance at one-third the cost of Sonnet. It is optimized for high-volume applications such as customer support automation, content moderation, and real-time coding assistance.
  • Claude Opus 4.1: A specialized model for complex, multi-step problems that require rigorous attention to detail and sustained focus.

Capabilities and Developer Platform Features

All Claude models available in Foundry support a wide range of Claude Developer Platform capabilities, including:

  • Code Execution Tool: For running and testing code.
  • Web Search and Fetch: For retrieving real-time information.
  • Citations: For grounded responses.
  • Vision: For processing visual data.
  • Tool Use: For integrating with external tools.
  • Prompt Caching: For reducing latency and cost.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Integrations

Claude is integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot to power specific high-value agents and tools:

  • Researcher Agent: Claude powers the Researcher agent for complex, multistep research tasks.
  • Agent Mode in Excel: Now available in preview, Claude can be used to build and edit spreadsheets directly in Excel, including generating formulas, analyzing data, and identifying errors.
  • Copilot Studio: Claude enables the development of custom agents within Copilot Studio.

Sources

Related