AI-900 Is Retired — AI-901 Replaced It. Here Is What That Means for You

Microsoft retired the AI-900 exam on June 30, 2026. Its replacement, AI-901, is live now and earns the same credential: Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals. Already certified? You keep your certification — fundamentals certifications do not expire. Mid-preparation? Your plan needs an update, not a restart. Here is what changed and what to do next.

What exactly changed

The retirement notice on the official AI-900 exam page is short: "The AI-900 exam was retired on June 30, 2026, and has been replaced by AI-901."

The certification did not change its name or its level. AI-901 leads to the same Azure AI Fundamentals badge, and the passing score is still 700. What changed is the content — and the change is big.

AI-900 tested five concept areas: generative AI, computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning on Azure, and general AI workloads. AI-901 replaces them with two domains:

• Identify AI concepts and capabilities — the concept side, at 40–45% of the exam
• Implement AI solutions by using Microsoft Foundry — the larger domain, at 55–60%

More than half the exam now sits on Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft's platform for building AI applications and agents. The technical bar moved up as well: Microsoft now expects candidates to know basic Python syntax and to be comfortable with REST APIs, SDKs, and command-line tools. At launch, AI-901 is available in English only.

In short: AI-900 asked whether you could describe AI on Azure. AI-901 asks whether you can describe it — and start building it.

Already hold AI-900? Your certification is safe

The exam retired; your certification did not. Microsoft's renewal policy says it in five words: "Fundamentals certifications do not expire."

Your Azure AI Fundamentals credential stays on your Microsoft Learn transcript, with no renewal assessment and no expiry date. The retirement only changes how new candidates earn the credential — it takes nothing away from people who already have it.

Were you preparing for AI-900?

Most of your effort still counts. We rebuilt our practice-exam bank from the AI-900 scope to the AI-901 blueprint. In that work, the concept material — AI workload types, machine learning fundamentals, vision and language ideas — largely carried over into the first domain. The genuinely new ground sat almost entirely in the second: the Foundry portal, its models and tools, and AI apps and agents.

So our advice is: do not start over. Keep the concept knowledge you built, and spend the extra time on Foundry itself. Half the exam now lives there — and reading about a portal is no substitute for clicking through it.

How to prepare for AI-901 now

Start with the official material: Microsoft's AI-901 study guide and the learning paths listed on the exam page.

One thing to know: Microsoft's own practice assessment for AI-901 is not yet available. The exam page notes these usually arrive within about eight weeks of an exam leaving beta.

Practice questions are still the most reliable way to find out whether you are ready. That is why we rebuilt our AI-901 practice exams question by question against the new two-domain blueprint. Every question traces to an official Microsoft page — no dumps. Practice tests do not replace the official material; they tell you whether it stuck.