Microsoft is reportedly expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships by bringing Anthropic’s technology into its popular Office 365 apps. According to The Information, the company will pay to use Anthropic’s AI models in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. This marks a shift away from relying only on OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, for productivity suites.
The decision highlights a growing distance between Microsoft and OpenAI. Recently, OpenAI has been pushing its own projects, including new infrastructure and even a potential competitor to LinkedIn.
Leaders at Microsoft reportedly believe that Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Sonnet 4, performs better than OpenAI’s technology in specific areas, like creating visually appealing PowerPoint slides.
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While OpenAI’s models will continue to play a major role, Anthropic’s tools will now be added alongside them to give users more powerful options.
This is not the first time Microsoft has opened the door to other AI providers. GitHub Copilot already gives developers access to models from Anthropic and xAI in addition to OpenAI. Microsoft is also investing in its own in-house AI systems. Recently, it introduced two models called MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview.
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Even with these changes, Microsoft insists that its partnership with OpenAI remains strong. “As we’ve said, OpenAI will continue to be our partner on frontier models and we remain committed to our long-term partnership,” Microsoft spokesperson Michael Collins told TechCrunch.
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