Based on the industry trend over the past two years, it is very clear that AI and AI agents are going to become an integral part of every enterprise organization. While the LLMs which power AI and AI agents will have a world knowledge with a cutoff date, it is essential to provide the enterprise data context to get better responses. To solve this problem, at Ignite 2025, Microsoft is introducing Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ.
Work IQ:
Work IQ is the intelligence layer built on data, memory, and inference. It connects to organizational and personal data such as SharePoint files, Outlook emails, Teams meetings, and it also builds personalized memory based on users" preferences, habits, and workflows. Work IQ is already powering several of the new enhancements Microsoft is announcing today for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Now, Microsoft is exposing the power of Work IQ with APIs, allowing developers to build AI agents targeting specific enterprise scenarios.
Conversational memory in Microsoft 365 Copilot lets it remember context and important details across sessions to give more relevant and personalized answers. It uses your work profile, instructions, preferences, and insights from past chats based on Work IQ. Users stay in control and can review or delete these memories anytime. This feature is available through the Frontier program.
Fabric IQ:
While Work IQ is based on Microsoft 365 data, Fabric IQ is a unified semantic intelligence layer for the entire Fabric data platform. Fabric IQ will enable organizations to make use of their entire data estate consolidated in OneLake for AI transformation. Once the Fabric IQ model is defined, it can be used everywhere across analytics, apps, and agents, improving reasoning quality while maintaining the existing governance policies.
Fabric IQ combines the following five integrated capabilities into one semantic intelligence system:
- Ontology: shared model of business entities, relationships, rules, and objectives
- Semantic Model: trusted BI definitions, now extended beyond analytics into operations and AI
- Graph: native graph engine for multi-hop reasoning and system-wide insights
- Data Agent: conversational agents that answer business questions using structured business meaning
- Operations Agent: autonomous agents that reason, learn, and act in real time to advance outcomes
Foundry IQ:
Foundry IQ is a fully managed knowledge system that can be used to ground AI agents. Foundry IQ will have a knowledge retrieval engine running over multiple data sources including Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Azure data services, custom web applications, and the web. Basically, it will be a single endpoint to have high-quality organizational data to maximize context for AI applications.
Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, and Work IQ together form IQ, Microsoft’s unified intelligence layer across data, apps, and productivity. Microsoft claims that AI agents built on this foundation will have deep enterprise context, thereby making reliable decisions and continually optimizing operations for better results.