Microsoft Is Now Selling Against OpenAI and Anthropic by Name, With Its Own MAI Models at the Center of FY27
TechCrunch reported July 29 that Microsoft has shifted to openly competing with OpenAI and Anthropic, following an internal FY27 planning session around July 14-15 that put proprietary MAI models at the center of the enterprise pitch and told sales teams to stop selling components and start selling the whole system. At the same time Microsoft shipped 40+ changes to Microsoft 365 Copilot including Claude in Copilot Chat, expanded model choice in Copilot Cowork and PowerPoint, AI content watermarking, a stronger Agent Builder and permanent Copilot bundles for small business. The strategy is explicitly harness-over-model: keep the agent layer swappable so no single lab owns the workflow, which is the same architectural argument independent builders make for BYOM, executed at distribution scale.
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