Summary
In mid-July 2026, Microsoft moved hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service to general availability, offering a managed runtime for agents that run for hours to weeks, with SLAs and 24/7 support. Agents can be built with LangGraph, the Microsoft Agent Framework, the Claude Agent SDK, the OpenAI Agents SDK, or GitHub Copilot SDK, each session isolated in an Azure Container Apps sandbox with a per-agent Entra identity.
What changed
Microsoft made hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service generally available—a managed, isolated runtime (Azure Container Apps sandboxes, per-agent Entra identity) supporting multiple agent frameworks and the OpenAI-compatible Responses API—with production SLAs and support.
Why it matters
GA managed hosting for long-running agents removes the operational burden of running agents in production and bakes in enterprise identity and isolation. Supporting rival SDKs (Claude, OpenAI, LangGraph) positions Azure as neutral infrastructure, competing head-on with AWS AgentCore and Google's agent platform.
Evidence excerpt
Microsoft moved its hosted agent service to general availability this week, giving developers a managed runtime for AI workflows that need hours, days, or weeks to complete ... each session runs in its own sandbox with a persistent filesystem and VM-level isolation.