Almost 5 months after Microsoft gave engineers access to Anthropic's Claude Code, company is canceling licenses; says: This is shared accountability to make ...

Microsoft is reportedly cancelling most internal licenses for Anthropic’s Claude Code AI coding tool as it starts shifting developers toward its own GitHub Copilot CLI platform. The move comes nearly five months after Microsoft first expanded access to Claude Code for thousands of employees, including engineers, project managers and designers. According to The Verge report, Claude Code quickly became popular among Microsoft employees and was widely used for coding, prototyping and testing ideas. However, Microsoft is now moving to make Copilot CLI its primary AI coding tool across major teams including Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams and Surface engineering groups.According to internal discussions cited in the report, Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices division plans to wind down usage of Claude Code by the end of June this year. Employees are reportedly being encouraged to move their workflows to GitHub Copilot CLI before the cutoff date.The decision is said to be partly strategic and partly financial. June 30 marks the end of Microsoft’s financial year, and reducing Claude Code licenses could help lower operating costs ahead of the new fiscal year starting in July.Microsoft VP Rajesh Jha explained the decision in an internal memo. “When we began offering both Copilot CLI and Claude Code, our goal was to learn quickly, benchmark the tools in real engineering workflows, and understand what best supported our teams,” Jha said.“Claude Code was an important part of that learning… at the same time, Copilot CLI has given us something especially important: a product we can help shape directly with GitHub for Microsoft’s repos, workflows, security expectations, and engineering needs.”Jha also said Microsoft and GitHub leadership now share responsibility for improving the platform.“This is a shared accountability across GitHub and E+D leadership: to make Copilot CLI the best agentic coding experience for Microsoft engineers,” he added.Despite the internal license cancellations, Microsoft’s broader partnership with Anthropic remains active, as stated in the report. Anthropic’s AI models will still be available through Copilot CLI, alongside models from OpenAI and Microsoft’s own AI systems.Microsoft also continues offering Anthropic models through its Foundry platform and uses Claude models inside some Microsoft 365 and Copilot features where they reportedly perform better for specific tasks.