Azure AI Search

Azure AI Search (now also branded Foundry IQ) is an enterprise knowledge system that powers retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications and enterprise search engines. It combines vector search, keyword search, and hybrid search (merged via Reciprocal Rank Fusion) with agentic retrieval to fuel AI agents with unified enterprise context, connecting to knowledge sources such as SharePoint, OneLake, Azure Blob Storage and the web. It is used by developers at more than 80,000 enterprises, including 80% of Fortune 500 companies, processes 3 billion daily enterprise search queries, and is available in more than 30 countries and regions.

Official product page

3published use cases

3industries

3countries on record

Conversational AI

top AI capability

Evidence mix: High 3 · Medium 0 · Low 0 — bands are computed from each record's evidence signals.

Industry

Country

3 use cases

ManufacturingConversational AIGenerative AI

Sandvik Revolutionizes Manufacturing with Microsoft AI Solutions

Sandvik, a Swedish manufacturing technology company, built the Manufacturing Copilot using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Search to give employees and customers natural-language access to decades of product documentation, help files, and audio/video recordings across its CAD/CAM software brands (including Cimatron, GibbsCAM, and SigmaNEST). Rather than building separate solutions per product, Sandvik created a shared service with product-specific Copilots, each trained on brand-specific proprietary knowledge and supporting 19 languages with domain-specific translation algorithms. The tool is used internally in sales, customer support, and training, and was first launched across three CAD/CAM brands with a rollout planned to reach 400,000 users. Sandvik reports an average productivity gain of 20-30% (up to 50% for entirely new problems) and roughly 50% less time to onboard new salespeople.

Sandvik· SwedenAzure OpenAI Service · Azure AI Search · GitHub Copilot

Financial ServicesGenerative AIConversational AIDocument Intelligence

Raiffeisen Bank International Launches Its Own ChatGPT Using Azure OpenAI Service

Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), a cooperative bank headquartered in Vienna, Austria serving 16.5 million customers in 11 markets, built 'RBI ChatGPT' using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Search within Azure AI Foundry, with Azure AI Content Safety for content moderation. The tool automates repetitive tasks like documenting intelligence and summarizing legal, regulatory and banking documents, and supports line leveling in reconciliation reporting, extracting and summarizing public news articles and financial reports, drafting emails, and answering regulatory questions. RBI ChatGPT was first deployed to 2,000 users and now has an active user base of over 20,000. A feature called 'yellowGPTs' lets employees contribute their own solutions and dedicated knowledge bases built on the platform. RBI is also experimenting with tying the o1 model on Azure OpenAI Service into its application framework.

Raiffeisen Bank International· AustriaAzure OpenAI Service · Azure AI Search · Azure AI Foundry +1

InsuranceGenerative AIRetrieval-Augmented GenerationConversational AIAgentic AI

Unipol accelerates insurance operations with Generative AI built by Reply

Italian insurer Unipol Group, serving customers through more than 2,000 agencies, worked with Reply (Cluster Reply and Sprint Reply) to build a governed Generative AI platform: a Foundation Layer/Unipol GenAI Stack using Azure AI Search and a Vector DB indexing over 60,000 documents; a Virtual Information Assistant chatbot with RAG over 50,000+ documents that reduces back-office ticket load and delivers responses in seconds; a network of AI agents built with Azure OpenAI, LangChain/LangGraph and UiPath that convert manual tasks into conversational interactions with real-time data validation; and an AI Guardrail governance layer (built on the LoopMind asset) providing LLM-as-a-judge monitoring, human-in-the-loop validation and AI Act compliance. Reply reports accelerated time-to-value, with new applications released in 1-3 months.

Unipol Group· ItalyAzure AI Search · Azure OpenAI · LangChain +3