Microsoft has broadened its Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem by integrating Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 alongside OpenAI’s models. The update, available through the Microsoft 365 admin center, allows organizations to enable access to multiple model families, giving users greater flexibility in powering Copilot’s Researcher agent and Copilot Studio.
“Our first-of-its-kind reasoning agent can now be powered by either OpenAI’s deep reasoning models or Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1,” said Charles Lamanna, President, Business and Industry Copilot.
The new capability enables customers to build and manage intelligent agents in Copilot Studio, with Anthropic’s models supporting reasoning and workflow automation. Users can toggle between Anthropic, OpenAI, and models from the Azure Model Catalog via a drop-down menu, tailoring the Copilot experience to their needs. Claude in Researcher is initially rolling out through Microsoft’s Frontier Program to Copilot-licensed customers who opt in. However, Anthropic’s models will be hosted outside Microsoft-managed environments and will remain under Anthropic’s terms of service.
“This is just the beginning—we’re committed to delivering model innovation at speed to empower every person with Microsoft 365 Copilot and transform business processes with agents,” Lamanna added.
The move underscores Microsoft’s push to diversify its AI partnerships while reducing heavy reliance on OpenAI, even as it continues testing its own large language model, MAI-1-preview. It also highlights the company’s ambition to create a multi-model Copilot ecosystem where enterprises can select the best reasoning engine for their business needs.
The announcement comes at a pivotal moment for the AI ecosystem. OpenAI, Microsoft’s long-standing partner with over $13 billion in funding from the tech giant since 2019, is undergoing governance restructuring, linking its nonprofit entity with equity in its Public Benefit Corporation—a move that could push its valuation beyond $100 billion. Meanwhile, OpenAI has committed $300 billion in joint projects with Oracle, and NVIDIA has announced plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to accelerate next-generation data center development.
By integrating Anthropic’s models into Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft is signaling its intent to embrace a pluralistic AI strategy, positioning Copilot as a flexible, future-ready platform for enterprises worldwide.
