Microsoft is pushing Copilot, but everyone just wants ChatGPT – Sherwood News
Microsoft’s pitch to sell its Copilot AI chatbot to enterprise customers is facing some stubborn resistance: people have used ChatGPT and they just like it more.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Microsoft’s sales team is having a hard time convincing companies why they should use Copilot over partner OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which share the same underlying models.
While Copilot is sometimes cheaper, and more tightly integrated into Microsoft’s productivity workhorses like Word, Excel, and Teams, companies are often using ChatGPT instead, and this might be increasing tensions in an already tense partnership.
OpenAI has said it has 3 million paying enterprise customers, and that number is growing fast. Microsoft told employees that “multiple dozens” of customers have over 100,000 paying users, which would work out to a floor of 2.4 million paying Copilot licenses, but the company hasn’t shared an exact figure.
But Microsoft has a deep, broad business and long-term relationships with enterprise customers, which might give it an edge in the long run.
Today, Microsoft shares hit an all-time high of $491.76.
While Copilot is sometimes cheaper, and more tightly integrated into Microsoft’s productivity workhorses like Word, Excel, and Teams, companies are often using ChatGPT instead, and this might be increasing tensions in an already tense partnership.
OpenAI has said it has 3 million paying enterprise customers, and that number is growing fast. Microsoft told employees that “multiple dozens” of customers have over 100,000 paying users, which would work out to a floor of 2.4 million paying Copilot licenses, but the company hasn’t shared an exact figure.
But Microsoft has a deep, broad business and long-term relationships with enterprise customers, which might give it an edge in the long run.
Today, Microsoft shares hit an all-time high of $491.76.
Meta is looking to raise a total of $29 billion to pay for its gargantuan AI data center plans, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The company is looking to raise $26 billion in debt and $3 billion in equity from firms including Apollo Global Management, KKR, Brookfield, Carlyle, and Pimco as it seeks to stay competitive in the AI race.
Meta recently delayed the release of the largest version of its flagship Llama 4 AI model, and rankled the AI community with controversial test scores for the smaller releases.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is deeply involved in personally recruiting a new team of AI all-stars to unlock “superintelligence” by poaching top researchers from competitors like OpenAI, reportedly with $100 million starting offers.
The company has upped its estimates for capex spending this year to $72 billion due to tariffs and bigger plans.
Meta’s competitors are in a feverish race to build massive AI data centers amid rapid breakthroughs in efficiency that could lead to a glut of AI data center capacity. Amazon is building 30 huge data centers in Indiana to provide computing resources for its parter Anthropic, and OpenAI’s massive Stargate project is currently under construction in Texas.
Meta recently delayed the release of the largest version of its flagship Llama 4 AI model, and rankled the AI community with controversial test scores for the smaller releases.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is deeply involved in personally recruiting a new team of AI all-stars to unlock “superintelligence” by poaching top researchers from competitors like OpenAI, reportedly with $100 million starting offers.
The company has upped its estimates for capex spending this year to $72 billion due to tariffs and bigger plans.
Meta’s competitors are in a feverish race to build massive AI data centers amid rapid breakthroughs in efficiency that could lead to a glut of AI data center capacity. Amazon is building 30 huge data centers in Indiana to provide computing resources for its parter Anthropic, and OpenAI’s massive Stargate project is currently under construction in Texas.
Meta’s path to AI domination seems to be paved with other AI companies and their talent.
The mostly successful launch of Tesla’s robotaxi in Austin as well as the expansion of Google-owned Waymo this week have been lifting the tide for other autonomous companies.
That includes companies working on the software and hardware that make it possible for cars to drive themselves.
They’re firms like Aeva, which provides lidar technology to manufacturers and is up 34% since last Friday. (Waymo uses lidar technology, while Tesla notably doesn’t.) Mobileye, which makes autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems and has partnered with Volkswagen, is up 25%. Meanwhile, Uber is reportedly trying to help its former CEO, Travis Kalanick, buy autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai, a Toyota partner whose stock is up 23% this week.
Travis Kalanick, the former Uber CEO who was forced out in 2017, is back at the company — sort of. Uber is in talks with Kalanick to help fund the purchase of autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai, The New York Times reports.
Uber’s stock is up 2.6% today while Pony.ai has spiked 12% on the news. Kalanick would run Pony.ai if the deal goes through, but it’s unclear what role Uber would play.
This is all happening as the self-driving space is heating up. Earlier this week, Uber and Waymo (which is owned by Google) launched their self-driving partnership in a second city, Atlanta, sending Uber’s stock soaring. On Sunday, Tesla finally launched its long-awaited robotaxi in Austin with about 20 cars in a limited area to some Tesla influencers.
This is all happening as the self-driving space is heating up. Earlier this week, Uber and Waymo (which is owned by Google) launched their self-driving partnership in a second city, Atlanta, sending Uber’s stock soaring. On Sunday, Tesla finally launched its long-awaited robotaxi in Austin with about 20 cars in a limited area to some Tesla influencers.
