Copilot users can now use Claude models, should they want to<\/b>
\nMicrosoft Copilot is gaining access to Anthropic\u2019s Claude models
They\u2019ll be hosted on AWS, and accessed via an API
Office apps could soon get Claude models, too
Microsoft has added Anthropic\u2019s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 to the selection available for Copilot users, marking a major shift as it pivots away from exclusively offering OpenAI models.
Anthropic\u2019s models will be available across two areas at first \u2013 a new \u2018Try Claude\u2019 button appears in the researcher agent experience, and will also be available in Copilot Studio, where users can opt for Claude models to help with building custom AI agents.
Business & Industry Copilot President Charles Lamanna announced the change in a blog post, noting Microsoft\u2019s \u201ccommitment to bring the best AI innovation from across the industry\u201d to Copilot.Microsoft now offers Anthropic models for Copilot
Claude models have started rolling out to users on the Frontier program, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio users can opt in, but there is a key difference between the Anthropic and OpenAI offerings.
Anthropic\u2019s models will not be hosted on Azure, but rather they will be accessed via an API and hosted on AWS infrastructure.
Though it marks a shift for consumer and enterprise models within the Microsoft ecosystem, developers have already had access to other models, and indeed GitHub Copilot in VS Code recently started favoring Claude Sonnet 4 over OpenAI models.
With Claude outperforming OpenAI models in Excel and PowerPoint tasks, it could just be a matter of time before alternatives start to become available within Microsoft\u2019s productivity suite.
\u201cThis is just the beginning,\u201d Lamanna said. \u201cAnd stay tuned: Anthropic models will bring even more powerful experiences to Microsoft 365 Copilot.\u201d
All of this comes after OpenAI and Microsoft parted ways. Once exclusive partners, OpenAI has now signed up with Google Cloud and others for compute, so it was only natural that Microsoft would begin using other AI models too.<\/p>\n