Microsoft is strengthening its collaboration with Anthropic, a major competitor to OpenAI. Beginning Wednesday, the tech company will start integrating Anthropic’s AI models into its Copilot assistant, which until now has primarily relied on OpenAI’s technology.
This move marks another phase in the gradual separation between the two companies that were once exclusive partners. It follows Microsoft’s recent agreement to bring Anthropic’s AI into Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Business users of Copilot will now have the option to select between OpenAI’s advanced reasoning models and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 or Claude Sonnet 4 for tasks such as in-depth research, building tailored AI solutions, and developing enterprise-level agents. Opus 4.1 is tailored for sophisticated reasoning, programming, and comprehensive system design, while Sonnet 4 excels at routine development, processing large datasets, and generating content.
