Microsoft packages business AI in single app as it tries to compete with Anthropic

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attends the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20, 2026.

Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Microsoft is shifting its strategy for its Copilot AI platform as the software giant keeps looking for momentum in enterprise AI, where Anthropic has been gaining traction.

On Friday, Microsoft introduced an updated Copilot app that can both code and handle complex productivity tasks, a move the company hopes will entice more of its Office 365 customers to pay for the advanced tools.

While Microsoft maintains a dominant position in business software through Office, its flagship work AI product hasn't taken off. Of more than 450 million existing commercial Office 365 seats across the globe, fewer than 7% have licenses for the AI addition.

Microsoft has, to this point, offered its 365 Copilot AI assistant for knowledge work separately from its GitHub Copilot coding agent. The market has been consolidating around easy-to-use products from OpenAI and Anthropic that bundle various functions. Microsoft's launch comes after CEO Satya Nadella, in June, talked up a future Copilot "super app."

Rather than charging for subscriptions like it does for most of its software — the commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $30 per user per month — Microsoft says clients will pay for the Cowork, Code and Autopilot portions of the new app based on usage, similar to how they buy other AI products.

"We're holding a very high bar," Jacob Andreou, Microsoft's executive vice president for Copilot, told CNBC. "This product is at its best when it's just optimizing for user value and for the quality of the output and what it's able to deliver." Cost efficiency is less important, he said.

Microsoft shares are up 3% this year as of Thursday's close, underperforming the Nasdaq and most of the company's megacap peers.

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McLaren told CNBC that he's excited for the new app "because it makes GitHub-like capability simpler for more people to use."

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