Microsoft Threatens Data Rivals With Native AI Layer

Microsoft unveiled Fabric IQ at its Fabric+SQL conference in Barcelona to more than 5,000 attendees from 71 countries, aiming to bind data and business semantics so Copilot can answer from company context.

Fabric IQ links to Copilot

Microsoft said Fabric IQ is now generally available in Copilot Chat and Cowork with no additional token costs, and that integration with the new Code experience will arrive through the Frontier program soon. The company said Fabric IQ connects OneLake data, Power BI semantic-model metrics and contextual ontologies to feed Copilot responses and actions from a shared business view.

Arun Ulag, executive vice president of Azure Data, opened the conference with usage figures: Fabric has more than 40,000 customers and about 2.6 million active users, the company said, and SQL remains in use at over 90% of Fortune 500 firms. Officials said certifications in the Fabric area are the fastest-growing within Microsoft’s ecosystem.

The company announced that Power BI Desktop can now generate agentic applications from trusted semantic models: users can describe an app in natural language, preview and publish it to Fabric without duplicating data. Microsoft said new Fabric application features include a TypeScript backend, Secret Store, PostgreSQL support, private access by default and built-in usage and performance metrics.

Microsoft said the aim is to make AI part of customers’ core processes by turning data into an operational business context that both people and agents can use. The company said developers and enterprise customers should expect Frontier program rollouts and broader Power BI agent availability by December 31, 2026.