Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attends the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 20, 2026.
Dennis Bariboos | Reuters
microsoft As the software giant continues to explore momentum in enterprise AI, the company is changing its strategy for its Copilot AI platform. human It is attracting attention.
Microsoft on Friday announced its latest Copilot app, which can both code and handle complex productivity tasks. The company hopes this will encourage more Office 365 customers to pay for advanced tools.
Microsoft maintains a dominant position in business software through Office, but its flagship business AI product has not caught on. Of the more than 450 million existing commercial Office 365 seats worldwide, less than 7% have AI add-on licenses.
Microsoft has previously offered the 365 Copilot AI assistant for knowledge work, separate from the GitHub Copilot coding agent. The market is converging around OpenAI and Anthropic’s easy-to-use products that bundle various features. Microsoft’s launch comes after CEO Satya Nadella talked about a future Copilot “super app” in June.
Rather than charging for a subscription like most software (commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $30 per user per month), Microsoft says customers will pay for the Cowork, Code, and Autopilot portions of the new app based on usage, just as they would buy any other AI product.
“We’re setting the bar very high,” Jacob Andreou, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Copilot, told CNBC. “This product is at its best when we’re optimizing user value, output quality, and what we can deliver.” Cost efficiency is less important, he says.
Microsoft stock is up 3% since the beginning of the year as of Thursday’s close, underperforming the Nasdaq and most of the company’s large-cap stocks.
New code features make it easier for non-technical users to start simple AI-driven programming projects and are based on the same technology as GitHub Copilot. The (Autopilot) tab allows users to create custom agents that can handle assignments and communicate in Teams and Outlook.
David McLaren, head of enterprise data and AI at consulting firm GHD, said the company is offering Microsoft Copilot to 12,000 employees and about 200 are experimenting with Copilot Cowork, which can handle more complex tasks.
McLaren told CNBC that he’s excited about the new app because it “makes features like GitHub easier for more people to use.”
Microsoft faces an increasingly crowded AI agent market. meta The Muse app, introduced earlier this month, has rocketed to the top. apple’s The App Store emerged due to the growing popularity of tools like Instinct and open source OpenClaw.
“The problem is that it’s almost impossible to get these agents into the enterprise,” Andreu said Wednesday at a customer preview of the product in Seattle. He acknowledged to CNBC that adding coding elements to the app is part of Microsoft’s bid to catch up.
And to meet user demands, Microsoft is investing in its own models while still relying on cutting-edge models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
A new app allows users of coding products to manually select the model they want to use, including cost-effective products from Microsoft. There is no Microsoft model available for the (Home) tab where users make productivity requests such as generating reports and scheduling changes.
Businesses enrolled in Microsoft’s Frontier program, which provides access to the latest features, will be able to use the (Home) and (Code) tabs in the coming weeks, and Autopilot will be available in private preview by the end of this month.
“When we think about the Frontier program, this is not about a particular Frontier model,” Nadella said at Wednesday’s event. “What we want to ensure is a frontier ecosystem where every company can leverage their human capital in the flow of AI and build continuous learning systems.”
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