Azure AI Foundry: Complete 2026 Guide to Enterprise AI Setup

Why I Always Start With Architecture, Not Models The first question I get from enterprise customers setting up Azure AI Foundry is almost always: "Which model should we use?" My answer is always the same — that's the last decision you should make, not the first. !Why I Always Start With Architecture, Not Models — Azure AI Foundry: Setting Up Your Enterprise AI Development Environment I've helped teams across Spain and Europe stand up their AI development environments on Azure AI Foundry. The ones that stall out early make the same mistake: they pick a model, start prompting, and then hit the wall when they need to onboard a second team, enforce governance, or explain costs to finance. The ones that move fast get the hub-and-project architecture right first, then let model selection follow. This post is the setup guide I wish I had for those early deployments. It covers the architecture decisions that actually matter, the prerequisites you'll want before touching the portal, and the operational patterns that keep multi-team AI development from becoming a governance nightmare. For the official overview, see What is Azure AI Foundry. Before you start [ ] Your Azure subscription has Azure OpenAI access approved — this requires a separate application if your subscription doesn't already have it, and approval can take days [ ] You have confirmed your Azure OpenAI regional quota for GPT-4o (tokens per minute) in the region you plan to deploy — quota is not uniform across regions and