Microsoft would pay Anthropic more than $2 billion a year to keep Copilot competitive

According to a report by The Information dated October 12, 2026, picked up by Crypto Briefing, Microsoft plans to pay Anthropic more than $2 billion a year to use Claude models inside Copilot. The original article is brief, so this summary sticks to what it reports.

The origin is a performance problem. Microsoft faced pressure from customers over the assistant's poor results, especially within Office apps. The company responded by adding Anthropic models to Copilot in summer 2025. That marked a clear break from its earlier preference for OpenAI models, which Microsoft could access at no additional cost thanks to its broad partnership.

The internal push came from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's executive vice president for Copilot. Lamanna showed that Claude models markedly improved results on specific tasks, such as financial automation in Excel and building presentations in PowerPoint.

In terms of scale, Copilot's enterprise users exceed 30 million, a figure that has more than doubled since early 2026. Microsoft now pairs Claude with OpenAI models in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.

Cost is a recurring concern. Microsoft's internal spending on Anthropic reached around $1 billion annualized at some earlier point in 2026, after which the company cut it by more than a third. Its main tool for controlling the bill is an in-house model router. It selects the cheapest model capable of handling each request. According to the report, Microsoft increasingly turns to OpenAI models through this system to save costs and improve margins.

The relationship between the companies is complex. Microsoft remains OpenAI's largest partner while also now being a major Anthropic customer. The text mentions commitments including up to $5 billion from Microsoft to Anthropic and a $30 billion commitment tied to Azure services. The article does not clearly detail how those deals are structured.

Lamanna's role has raised his internal profile. Initial doubts about the financial impact of Anthropic's premium pricing did not stop him, and his advocacy for the shift has put him in good standing with senior leadership. The Information reports speculation that he could one day succeed Satya Nadella as CEO.

The article concludes that the final figure will depend on how much Copilot usage grows and how aggressively the router shifts work to cheaper models. Microsoft has already shown that it cuts Anthropic spending when costs spike.