Microsoft retired AI-900 on 30 June 2026. If you have been putting off Azure AI Fundamentals, or you started revising AI-900 material and are not sure it still applies, here is exactly what changed, what stayed the same, and how to get up to speed on AI-901 without relearning from scratch.
The short answer
AI-900 can no longer be booked. Its replacement, AI-901, still awards the same Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals certification, but it is a meaningfully different exam: two domains instead of five, more than half the marks on building things in Microsoft Foundry rather than concepts alone, and an expectation of some Python and Azure familiarity that AI-900 never asked for.
- AI-900 retired 30 June 2026
- AI-901 skills measured updated 15 April 2026
- Pass score 700 out of 1000
- Exam length 45 minutes (65-minute seat time), typically 40–60 questions
- UK price £64 at Pearson VUE (Certiport for students and instructors)
- Certification Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals — does not expire
If you already hold AI-900, nothing happens to it — Microsoft's fundamentals certifications do not expire, so your certificate stays exactly as valid as it was the day you passed.
What actually changed
AI-900 was a five-domain, concepts-only exam. AI-901 keeps the underlying concepts but restructures everything around two domains:
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Identify AI concepts and capabilities | 40–45% |
| Implement AI solutions by using Microsoft Foundry | 55–60% |
The concepts domain covers the six responsible AI principles, how generative AI models work and how you pick, deploy and configure one, and the workload areas: generative and agentic AI, text analysis (keyword extraction, entity detection, sentiment, summarisation), speech recognition and synthesis, computer vision and image generation, and information extraction from text, images, audio and video.
The bigger shift is the Foundry domain, which is now the majority of the paper: writing system and user prompts, deploying a model and calling it from the Foundry portal, building a lightweight chat client with the Foundry SDK, creating and testing a single agent, text analysis with Azure Language, spoken prompts with Azure Speech, vision and image generation with multimodal models, and extracting information from documents with Azure Content Understanding.
The naming changed too
AI-901 uses Microsoft's current names throughout, and older AI-900 material will actively teach you the wrong ones:
- Microsoft Foundry — formerly Azure AI Foundry
- Foundry Tools — formerly Azure AI services
- Foundry resources and projects, Foundry Agent Service, Foundry IQ — none of these existed under those names on AI-900
This is part of a wider 2026 refresh across Microsoft's AI track — AI-102 was replaced by AI-103, DP-100 by AI-300, and AZ-500 by SC-500 — so if you are cross-referencing older study material anywhere in the Microsoft AI/Azure space, check the exam code, not just the title.
Practise against the current AI-901 domains. PassNova's bank is 150 questions weighted to the two official domains, written from Microsoft's own learning paths, with a clear explanation on every answer — free, no sign-up.
Do you need to code for AI-901?
Microsoft's own audience profile now lists knowledge of Python coding syntax and programming techniques and familiarity with Azure resources as expected background, and the exam notes add that you should be comfortable with REST APIs, SDKs and CLIs. It is still pitched as a fundamentals exam, so do not expect to write code under exam conditions — but expect questions on which client, method, endpoint or parameter a lightweight application would use, not purely abstract concept questions.
How to revise for AI-901
- Start with Microsoft's two free learning paths — AI concepts for developers and technology professionals, and Get started with AI applications and agents on Azure — both cover the exam's two domains directly.
- Do not rely on AI-900 notes for the Foundry section. The concepts carry across reasonably well, but the naming and the workflow (a Foundry resource holding projects, rather than separate standalone services) are new enough that old diagrams will mislead you.
- Weight your time to match the paper. Foundry is 55–60% of the marks — more than half your revision time should go there, not into concepts you may already know from AI-900.
- Finish with Microsoft's official practice assessment on AI Skills Navigator (sign-in required) before you book, alongside timed mocks.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still book AI-900?
No. Microsoft retired AI-900 on 30 June 2026 and it can no longer be booked. AI-901 is the only entry-level Azure AI exam currently available.
Does my AI-900 certification stop counting?
No. Existing AI-900 holders keep a certification that does not expire — retirement affects which exam you can sit going forward, not certifications already earned.
Is AI-901 harder than AI-900?
It is different rather than simply harder: the pass score (700/1000) and exam length are similar to how Microsoft runs its fundamentals exams generally, but more than half the paper now tests applying concepts in Microsoft Foundry rather than concepts alone, and Microsoft expects some Python and Azure familiarity that AI-900 did not.
What is Microsoft Foundry?
The unified platform (formerly Azure AI Foundry) for building and managing AI apps and agents on Azure — a Foundry resource holds projects, a model catalog, Foundry Tools such as Azure Language and Azure Speech, Foundry Agent Service for building agents, and Foundry IQ for grounding agents in your own data.
One point of clarity: PassNova is a practice and revision site, not a Microsoft delivery partner — you book and sit AI-901 through Pearson VUE. Details in this article come from Microsoft Learn's own certification pages and were checked in September 2026; confirm current details on the official AI-901 page before you book.