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Microsoft tells sales staff to downplay OpenAI and Anthropic
At an internal FY27 kickoff, Microsoft urged sales teams to pitch its own AI models as cheaper and better—even where rival models still power Copilot.
Image: TNW
Microsoft used an internal meeting on Tuesday to coach its sales force on how to sell against OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic—notable because OpenAI and Anthropic still supply models inside some Microsoft products.
The session was framed as a kickoff for the fiscal year that began this month. According to the presentation, Microsoft’s in-house MAI models are cheaper, more efficient, and easier to sell because they come bundled with the rest of the company’s software stack.
“Everyone else is selling parts. We’re selling the full end-to-end system. That’s the story that we all need to get out there and tell in FY27.”
Another executive vice president, Jacob Andreou, took the pitch further by directly comparing Copilot with Anthropic’s Claude. Inside Microsoft’s office apps, Andreou said, Claude was slower, less accurate, and missing key security integrations. That is awkward timing: Claude is currently embedded in Copilot.
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The broader shift has been building for months. Earlier this month, Microsoft began replacing OpenAI and Anthropic models in Word and Excel, a move reported as cost-cutting. Microsoft’s AI chief has also said the company wants to eliminate what it pays Anthropic. Internally, Microsoft has also scaled back its use of Claude Code, despite having been one of Anthropic’s heaviest users outside Anthropic itself.
What changed in the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship
A key turning point came in April, when Microsoft and OpenAI amended their partnership and removed the exclusivity clause. That allowed OpenAI to sell to Microsoft’s competitors, weakening the logic of treating OpenAI purely as a privileged partner. Amazon soon started offering OpenAI models through AWS.
There is also a financial backdrop. Microsoft has spent the past year defending its AI capital spending to investors, and the source points to a $357bn drawdown as raising the pressure. Arguing that Microsoft’s internal models are not just cheaper but better helps justify that investment.
Whether enterprise buyers agree is another question. Claude has become the default model in enterprise AI coding tools, and customers adopted it with benchmark data in hand. A Microsoft sales slide arguing otherwise may not carry the same weight. TechCrunch contacted Microsoft and Anthropic; neither had commented at the time of publication.
For now, Microsoft is still hedging across all three fronts: it holds a large OpenAI stake, ships Anthropic models in Copilot, and sells its own MAI lineup against both.
Enterprise Editor
Marcus follows the money. He covers enterprise software, cloud architecture, and the tectonic shifts in Big Tech strategy. He translates dense earnings calls and complex M&A activity into actionable insights about where the industry is actually heading. If a tech giant makes a silent pivot, Marcus is usually the first to notice.
via TNW
