Microsoft has added Deep Research, developed by OpenAI, to its Azure AI Foundry agent service to help enterprises integrate research automation into their business applications.
Microsoft has added Deep Research, developed by OpenAI, to its Azure AI Foundry agent service to help enterprises integrate research automation into their business applications.
The integration of research automation is made possible by the Deep Research API and SDK, which developers can use to embed, extend, and organize Deep Research as a Service across the enterprise ecosystem, including data and existing systems, InfoWorld writes .
Developers can use Deep Research to automate large-scale analytics, large-scale research with source tracking, programmatically create and deploy agents as services that are invoked by applications, workflows, or other agents, and orchestrate complex tasks using Logic Apps, Azure Functions, and Foundry connectors.
Essentially, the new capability is designed to help enterprises enhance their AI agents to perform deeper analysis of complex data, enabling better decision-making and increased productivity.
Deep Research essentially uses a combination of OpenAI and Microsoft technologies, such as o3-deep-research, other GPT models, and Grounding with Bing Search, when integrated into an agent.
When an agent with Deep Research integrated receives a research request—from a user or another application—it uses GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 to interpret the intent, fill in any missing details, and define a clear, actionable scope for the task.
After defining a task, the agent activates the Bing-based Grounding tool to obtain an accurate selection of recent, high-quality web content.
Next, the o3-deep-research agent initiates the research process by analyzing the collected information, and instead of simply summarizing content, it evaluates, adapts, and synthesizes findings from multiple sources, adjusting its approach as new data emerges.
The entire process leads to a final output, which is a structured report documenting not only the answer but also the model's reasoning path, references to sources, and any clarifications requested during the session.
Deep Research inside Azure AI Foundry Agent Service will cost enterprises $10 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens for the 03-deep-research model only.
Cached input data for the model will cost $2.50 per million tokens.
Additionally, businesses will be charged a separate fee for Grounding with Bing search and the underlying GPT model used to refine questions.
