Microsoft adds Anthropic AI to Copilot 365 — after claiming OpenAI’s GPT-4 model is “too slow and expensive”

by

Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar deal with OpenAI has faced significant challenges recently. These stem from OpenAI’s decision to become a for-profit company, a move designed to secure funding and protect itself from unwanted influence or being bought out by others.

In recent months, Microsoft has been reducing its reliance on OpenAI by creating its own AI models. These new models will be slightly less advanced than OpenAI’s ChatGPT, lagging behind by about 3 to 6 months.

Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suleyman recently announced the company is planning major investments in creating its own AI chip cluster, aiming for greater independence in AI development. In the meantime, Microsoft has also revealed it will be incorporating Anthropic’s AI models into its Copilot product.

Microsoft isn’t ending its partnership with OpenAI. You’ll still be able to access OpenAI’s newest AI models through Copilot. But now, you’ll also have the option to choose between OpenAI and Anthropic’s AI models, letting you pick the one that works best for you.

Anthropic’s AI models are now available within Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher tool, assisting with report creation and data analysis. If you’re part of Microsoft’s Frontier program-giving early access to new AI features-you’ll be able to use both Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 alongside OpenAI’s models, all directly within Copilot.

According to Microsoft’s president of business and industry Copilot, Charles Lamanna:

You can expect even better features in Microsoft 365 Copilot as Anthropic’s AI models are added.

OpenAI didn’t cut it for Microsoft

I was really excited to hear NVIDIA is planning to invest potentially up to $100 billion in OpenAI! It sounds like they’re going to build a ton of new data centers, which is awesome because OpenAI needs a *lot* of computing power to keep up with everything. It’s great to see them planning for the future and being able to handle all the demand.

From my perspective, the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI has shifted recently. While Microsoft was previously OpenAI’s sole cloud provider, that exclusivity ended with the announcement of OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate project – a large-scale initiative to build data centers nationwide. Despite losing that exclusive status, Microsoft still has a significant advantage; as OpenAI’s biggest investor, they retain the right to be first in line for future cloud provision opportunities.

Recent reports suggest Microsoft is exploring AI options beyond OpenAI, planning to include models from other companies in its Copilot assistant. Notably, Microsoft has stated that OpenAI’s GPT-4 is not fast or cost-effective enough for all Copilot 365 users.

Like Microsoft, OpenAI is also exploring other options for cloud computing power. Recent reports indicate they’re talking to Google about providing more support, even though Sam Altman has stated OpenAI isn’t currently limited by computing resources. This is somewhat surprising, considering Microsoft recently secured two large data center deals but decided against providing extra support for training ChatGPT.

So, it looks like Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, might have been right! After OpenAI showed off their ‘Stargate’ project, he predicted Microsoft would stop relying on OpenAI’s technology, and it’s starting to look like that’s exactly what’s happening. As a tech enthusiast, I’m really curious to see how this all plays out – it could be a big shift in the AI landscape.

Stay up-to-date with the latest from Windows Central by following us on Google News! You’ll get all our news, insights, and features right in your feed.

Read More

2025-09-25 14:10