Anthropic’s Claude models will be available as an option in Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of an expansion of the Redmond company’s AI platform for business users.
The news, announced Wednesday morning, comes as Microsoft and OpenAI rework the terms of their partnership and collaborate with other key players across the tech industry.
The Claude integration is a departure from Microsoft’s previous reliance on a combination of OpenAI’s GPT models and its own AI technology to power its productivity tools.
The approach is “all about bringing the best AI from across the industry to Copilot, tuned for work and tailored to every business,” wrote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a post on X.
Earlier this week, OpenAI announced an investment of up to $100 billion from Nvidia. Microsoft has been OpenAI’s biggest investor to this point.
A source familiar with the situation told GeekWire that Microsoft supported the Nvidia investment and was not surprised by it, despite a report by CNBC that Microsoft was only informed about it the day before it was signed.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is the company’s business-focused AI assistant, also embedded in tools such as Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams. It’s distinct from the consumer-facing Copilot available in Windows or Bing, with features for workplace productivity and enterprise data.
Microsoft’s Anthropic rollout is starting with the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, which can now run on Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 in addition to OpenAI’s models, according to a Microsoft post detailing the integrations.
Claude models will also be available in Copilot Studio, Microsoft’s tool for creating and managing custom AI agents.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that Anthropic’s Claude Code would be available as part of Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot autonomous coding agent, in addition to OpenAI’s Codex agent. The company also announced plans to offer Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini, developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, via Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry AI platform.
Read the full article here
