The $500 million Anthropic relationship that reveals what Redmond really thinks about AI coding tools
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Acccording to The Verge (paywalled), last week, Microsoft told employees across its Windows, Microsoft 365, Teams, Bing, Edge, and Surface divisions to install Claude Code, a competing AI coding tool built by Anthropic. Not as a curiosity and neither a one-off experiment. Instead, it was poised a serious internal tool to be tested alongside the company’s own GitHub Copilot.
The same GitHub Copilot that Microsoft has spent years positioning as the future of software development. The same tool that generated over 40% revenue growth in Q4 2024. The same product they’re actively selling to your company right now.
Are you kidding me?
If you’re wondering what Microsoft knows that you don’t, you’re asking the right question.
But looking deeper in both companies’ business interests, if kind of makes sense long-term if you check their mutual commitments right now: