Microsoft Corporation's (MSFT.US) "Plan B": Dissatisfied with OpenAI's performance, Copilot fully introduces Anthropic to open the era of dual engines.

According to informed sources, Microsoft Corporation(MSFT.US) has become one of the top clients of Anthropic, with a potential annual investment of about $500 million, using Anthropic's artificial intelligence (AI) to power Microsoft Corporation products. Microsoft is also increasing efforts to promote Anthropic's AI models to its cloud computing clients, which could bring in more revenue for both companies. Sources indicate that Microsoft is incentivizing Azure salespeople to sell Anthropic's models and increasing spending on Anthropic AI models for internal use and products. These initiatives come as OpenAI, supported by Microsoft, is engaging in more business with Microsoft's competitors. According to two Microsoft employees, Microsoft recently informed some Azure salespeople that selling Anthropic AI models to Microsoft cloud customers will be counted towards their sales quotas, just like selling internally developed software. Microsoft typically does not provide such sales incentives for non-Microsoft products, as they have lower profitability for Azure. The current sales incentives for Anthropic will continue until the end of June. The company previously provided similar incentives for selling OpenAI models (Microsoft also sells these models through Azure). The new quota system means that salespeople have the same motivation to sell Anthropic models as they do for OpenAI models. These moves indicate that Microsoft, like other mature tech companies, is closely collaborating with several AI developers, presenting both significant revenue opportunities and potential threats to some core businesses. Microsoft is also competing to use the technologies of OpenAI and Anthropic to create its own AI automation products for enterprise customers, mitigating the risk of losing such business to AI newcomers. In November 2025, Microsoft committed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropicthe company had previously received support from Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) and Alphabet's Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US). Anthropic has also committed to invest $30 billion in Microsoft Azure's computing capacity and signed contracts to purchase up to an additional 1 gigawatt (GW) of computing capacity. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI and holds nearly 27% of the ChatGPT manufacturer. Anthropic mainly generates revenue by directly selling AI to enterprises, but some salespeople from Microsoft and Anthropic are cooperating to promote the purchase of Anthropic models through Azure to enterprises. Anthropic is also working with Amazon.com, Inc. and Alphabet Inc. Class C to jointly sell their models to large customers. As of July last year, Microsoft's monthly spending on Anthropic models exceeded $40 million, with an annual rate of about $500 million. These models power features in GitHub Copilot, such as the ability to monitor website downtime and automatically repair it. Subsequently, Microsoft increased its purchases of Anthropic models to drive features in other products like 365 Copilot and Security Copilot, including complex operations such as generating PowerPoint presentations based on brief text prompts. Anthropic previously predicted that by the end of 2025, its annual revenue will be between $7.5 billion and $9 billion. Compared to the public retail price of the startup company, Anthropic has offered discounts to Microsoft when using models for internal purposes such as prototyping, data analysis, and other research. After Microsoft executives were disappointed with the performance of some features powered by OpenAI, Microsoft first began incorporating Anthropic models into 365 Copilot. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has recently pushed the product department to use Anthropic models to speed up development. Recently, Anthropic engineers have been providing support to Microsoft engineers in developing Copilot features powered by Anthropic models.