Microsoft says Microsoft 365 Copilot has over 20 million paid seats

In short: Microsoft says its Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant now has over 20 million paid business user seats, and people are using it more over time.

What happened

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on the company’s quarterly earnings call that Microsoft 365 Copilot has reached 20 million paid enterprise seats. A “seat” is a paid license for one person at a company.

Nadella also said more large companies are buying Copilot at scale. Microsoft says it has quadrupled the number of organizations paying for more than 50,000 seats. Nadella named Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes, and Roche as companies with more than 90,000 seats each, and pointed to a recently announced Accenture deal for over 740,000 seats.

Microsoft also tried to address skepticism about whether employees actually use Copilot after it is purchased. Nadella said Copilot queries per user rose nearly 20% compared to the prior quarter. He added that weekly engagement is now at the same level as Outlook, meaning it is becoming a routine work habit for some users.

One driver of usage, according to Microsoft, is “agent mode.” This is a setting where Copilot can take multi-step actions inside documents, like a helper who can follow a short checklist for you inside Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

Microsoft also said Copilot is not tied to a single AI model provider. For example, Microsoft 365 supports Anthropic’s Claude.

Why it matters

For many office workers, tools like Word, Excel, and Outlook are where the workday happens. If Copilot is being bought and used at this scale, it suggests AI features are moving from experiments to everyday workplace tools, and more companies may feel pressure to adopt similar assistants.

Source: TechCrunch AI