Azure Functions Ships Serverless Agents Runtime at Build 2026
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Serverless agents runtime with MCP is a novel and highly relevant development for AI agent orchestration.
Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure Functions serverless agents runtime at Build 2026, enabling event-driven AI agents defined in .agent.md files with YAML frontmatter for triggers and markdown for instructions. The runtime supports any Azure Functions trigger (HTTP, Timer, Service Bus, etc.), MCP tool servers, sandboxed code execution via Azure Container Apps dynamic sessions, and 1,400+ managed connectors including Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. Billing remains standard Flex Consumption with scale-to-zero and no additional 'agents tax', while cold start latency is attributed to LLM invocation rather than the platform.