Recent News in Analytics and AI: September 2025 Edition

September’s summary of recent news in analytics and AI covers a range of significant updates: new features in Power BI, major announcements from the European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference 2025 (FabCon 2025), notable agent-focused enhancements in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, as well as important developments in the Azure and open-source analytics and AI communities.

Read on and get up to speed.

Power BI

• September marked the general availability of Microsoft Power BI’s Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL). TMDL provides a code-first approach for defining and editing semantic models, giving users enhanced control and transparency. After its initial preview in January, TMDL is now accessible to all users. Learn more.

• A preview of DAX User Defined Functions (UDFs) for Power BI was announced, allowing users to create reusable DAX functions with parameters, similar to functions in programming languages. This feature enables logic to be written once and reused throughout a model, simplifying code management. DAX UDFs are currently in preview, with more details expected soon. Learn more.

• Power BI’s web-based semantic model editing became generally available in September, benefiting Mac and web users. This update brings core modelling capabilities to the browser, enabling users to get data for semantic models from over 100 connectors and edit existing models directly online, without needing Power BI Desktop. Learn more.

• A significant update in September’s Power BI feature summary introduced separate refresh options for data and schema in Power BI Desktop. Previously, clicking "refresh" would always sync the schema and then refresh data. Now, users can choose to refresh 'Schema and data', just 'Schema', or just 'Data', providing more granular control over refresh operations. Learn more.

Microsoft Fabric

• September was significant for Microsoft Fabric as it hosted the European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference 2025. The event featured four days of keynotes and announcements about upcoming features. Highlights included the preview of Graph and Maps in Fabric, new enterprise-grade security enhancements, numerous demos, and the launch of FabCon TV which is a new platform for expert-led Fabric content. Learn more.

• Microsoft Fabric introduced major enhancements to Dataflow Gen2, its next-generation data transformation engine. The new two-tier pricing model makes it significantly more cost-effective, with the first 10 minutes of each query billed at a 25% lower rate and any time beyond that at a 90% lower rate compared to before. Performance has also improved, with faster execution and support for parallel queries. New features include parameterised dataflows, direct output to Lakehouses and Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2, and integration with Fabric variable libraries. Learn more.

• Microsoft Fabric previewed a new 'Secure' tab in OneLake, providing a unified view for managing and understanding access to all Fabric items. This update allows users to inspect and modify OneLake security roles from a single interface, improving security management. The feature is currently available in preview. Learn more.

• As of 30th September, the variable library item is generally available in Microsoft Fabric. It has full support in Pipelines with preview support expanding beyond OneLake Shortcuts to include Dataflow Gen2, Copy Job, and Notebook items. This is a significant milestone and makes deployments in Fabric more practical from a CI/CD perspective. Learn more.

Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio

• Microsoft 365 Copilot introduced Agent Mode in Office apps and Office Agent in Copilot chat. These features bring "vibe working" to the Copilot ecosystem, inspired by the productivity gains of "vibe coding" in software development. Agent Mode enables advanced AI-generated spreadsheets and documents, while Office Agent helps create polished PowerPoint presentations and generates Word documents directly from Copilot chat. These features are set to expand to Excel soon. Learn more.

• On 25th September, Microsoft launched the Microsoft Marketplace for Copilot. This new platform serves as a central hub for users to discover, try, and purchase a variety of products and services, including agents designed for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The marketplace aims to help organisations find solutions that enhance productivity, with more updates expected soon. Learn more.

• Microsoft Copilot Studio now includes support for Anthropic models, with Claude Sonnet 4.5 joining the multi-model line-up alongside OpenAI models. Initially, Anthropic models are available to customers in early release environments, with a preview rollout to all environments expected within two weeks and full production availability planned by the end of 2025. Learn more.

• AI approvals are now available in Microsoft Copilot Studio, enabling automated decision-making based on business rules and criteria. This update allows the AI to evaluate requests and make approve or reject decisions automatically, aiming to save time, reduce costs, minimise errors, and improve outcomes. Learn more.

Azure Analytics and AI

• Azure Databricks introduced Agent Bricks, a new platform for 'building, evaluating, and deploying production-grade AI agents for enterprise workflows'. Agent Bricks claims to enable the creation of agents up to 90 times more cost-effectively, thanks to automated prompt optimisation. Learn more.

• Azure Databricks now allows users to run OpenAI models directly within its environment, including the latest models such as GPT-5. These models can be accessed via API or SQL, with no additional setup required. This update enables organisations to build and deploy domain-specific agents on enterprise data with secure, governed integration. Learn more.

• Microsoft is advancing its trustworthy AI initiatives with Azure AI Foundry, which supports the broader Agent Factory ecosystem. Azure AI Foundry integrates security, safety, and governance features to help enterprises build more reliable AI agents. It introduces industry-first agent controls and is currently the only AI platform with a cross-prompt injection classifier. Soon, agents created with Azure AI Foundry will receive an Entra Agent ID, allowing organisations to monitor all active agents across a tenant and reduce shadow agents. Learn more.

• Azure AI Foundry introduced new features to accelerate agent development from prototype to production. These include support for multi-agent orchestration using open standards like A2A and MCP, agentic retrieval for improved search and context handling, and new observability tools for monitoring agent behaviour. These additions aim to simplify development and improve reliability across real-world deployments. Learn more.

Open-Source Analytics and AI

• More large organisations are adopting Polars to improve data infrastructure efficiency. A recent case study highlighted how Decathlon, the sports retailer, migrated from Pandas to Polars, resulting in faster and more efficient data pipelines. Learn more.

• DuckLake 0.3 was released, introducing Iceberg interoperability and geometry support. This update, along with the DuckLake DuckDB extension, makes the system more robust and feature-rich than previous versions, offering smoother performance and expanded capabilities. Learn more.

• Daft published a detailed blog post explaining its Local Execution mechanism. The post provides insights into how this high-performance data engine processes user-submitted DataFrames or SQL queries, with practical examples and use cases to help users understand Daft’s execution model. Learn more.

• Apache Airflow released version 3.1.0, which introduces Human-in-the-Loop workflows, support for 17 languages, and several new features. The release emphasises putting humans at the centre of data workflows, enhancing flexibility and user control. Learn more.

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