How do you pick the right model for your task with 11000 options? How do you keep up with the latest news and trends? Model Mondays has you covered. Join us for weekly livestreams and AMAs as we build your model IQ one spotlight at a time! Register Now: https://aka.ms/model-mondays/rsvp
Quick Links To RSVP for each episode:
- EP1: Advanced Reasoning Models:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25905/- EP2: Model Context Protocol:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25906/- EP3: SLMs (and Reasoning):
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25907/Get All The Details: https://aka.ms/model-mondays
Azure AI Foundry offers the best model choice
Did you manage to catch up on all the talks from Microsoft Build 2025? If, like me, you are interested in building AI-driven applications on Azure, you probably started by looking at what’s new in Azure AI Foundry. I recommend you read Asha Sharma’s post for the top 10 things you need to know in this context. And it starts with New Models & Smarter Models!
New Models | Azure AI Foundry now has 11,000+ models to choose from – including frontier models from partner providers, and thousands of open-source community variants from Hugging Face. But how do you pick the right one for your needs?
Smarter Models | It's not just about model selection, but about the effort required to use the model and validate the results. How can you improve the user experience and build trust and confidence in your customers? Solutions like Model Router and Azure AI Evaluations SDK help.
The Challenge? | New models, features, and tools being released daily - the information overload is real. How do we keep up with the latest updates – and skill up on model choices?
Say Hello to Model Mondays!
Model Mondays is a weekly series with a livestream on Microsoft Reactor (on Mondays) and a follow-up AMA on Azure AI Foundry Discord (on Fridays). Here are the three links to know:
- Visit the Model Mondays repo: https://aka.ms/model-mondays
- Watch the Model Mondays playlist: https://aka.ms/model-mondays/playlist
- Join #model-mondays on Discord: https://aka.ms/model-mondays/discord
Visit the playlist or repo to catch up on replays from Season 1 (above). Learn about topics like reasoning models, visual generative models, open-source AI, forecasting models, and local AI development with Visual Studio AI Toolkit. Each 30-minute episode consists of:
- 5-min Highlights. Catch up on top model-related news from the previous week.
- 15-min Spotlight. Get a deep dive into a specific model, model family, or related tool.
- Q&A. Ask questions on chat during the livestream, or join the AMA on Discord on Friday.
Register Now to Join Us for Season 2!
Microsoft Build showed us that the model catalog is expanding quickly – and so are the tools that are available, to help you select, customize, and evaluate, your AI application. In Season 2, we’re going to dive deeper into advanced topics in models and tools. Some of the topics that we hope to cover include:
- Advanced Reasoning Models – Deep Research, Visual Reasoning and more.
- Model Context Protocol – What it is, examples of MCP Servers today.
- SLMs and Reasoning – We dive into the Phi-4 model ecosystem for insights.
- Foundry Labs – Explore projects like Magentic-UI and MCP Server.
- Open-Source Models – Explore the 10K+ community models from Hugging Face.
- Edge Models – Explore Foundry Local and the rise of on-device AI capabiltiies.
- Models for AI Agents – Explore the Agent Catalog samples like Red-Teaming
- Model Playgrounds – Explore Image, Video, Agent, Chat, Language playgrounds
- Advanced Fine Tuning – Learn to fine GPT models, and use the Foundry Portal
- AI Developer Experience – Get productive with AI Toolkit & VS Code Extension pack
Our first three episodes below are open for registration right now!
- EP1: Advanced Reasoning Models:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25905/ - EP2: Model Context Protocol:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25906/ - EP3: SLMs (and Reasoning):
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25907/
Let's build our model IQ and get starting developing AI applications on Azure!
Want to Build AI Apps - and need resources to accelerate your journey?
- Chat with us on Azure AI Foundry Discord - https://aka.ms/aifoundrydiscord
- Provide feedback on our Discussion Forum - https://aka.ms/aifoundryforum
- Skill up with the Azure AI Foundry Learn Course - http://aka.ms/learnatbuild
- Review the Azure AI Foundry Documentation - http://aka.ms/AzureAI
- Download and explore the Azure AI Foundry SDK - http://aka.ms/aifoundrysdk
Updated Jun 05, 2025
Version 2.0
nitya
Microsoft
Microsoft
