Microsoft Expands AI Offerings with Anthropic Claude Models in 365 Copilot

Microsoft has officially integrated Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 artificial intelligence models into its Microsoft 365 Copilot suite, specifically for the Researcher agent and Copilot Studio. This move, which began rolling out today through the Frontier Program, signifies Microsoft's commitment to a multi-model AI strategy, offering enterprise customers greater flexibility and choice in their AI-powered workflows.

The integration allows users to select between OpenAI's existing models and Anthropic's advanced offerings for various tasks. Charles Lamanna, President of Microsoft's Business & Industry Copilot team, emphasized this shift, stating, "Copilot will continue to be powered by OpenAI’s latest models, and now our customers will have the flexibility to use Anthropic models too—starting in Researcher or when building agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio." This expansion aims to bring the "best AI innovation from across the industry" to Microsoft 365 Copilot, tailored for business needs.

In the Researcher agent, users can now power complex, multi-step research with Claude Opus 4.1, alongside OpenAI's deep reasoning models. Similarly, Copilot Studio now features Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 as model options, enabling developers to build, orchestrate, and manage enterprise-grade AI agents for deep reasoning, workflow automation, and flexible agentic tasks. Admins must enable these Anthropic models within the Microsoft 365 Admin Center before they can be utilized by users.

This strategic decision by Microsoft also reflects a broader industry trend towards diversifying AI partnerships, potentially reducing reliance on a single provider like OpenAI. While OpenAI remains a key partner, Microsoft is actively exploring and incorporating models from various developers, including Anthropic, whose models are primarily hosted on Amazon Web Services. As the official blog post quoted in the tweet noted, "And stay tuned: Anthropic models will bring even more powerful experiences to Microsoft 365 Copilot," hinting at further enhancements.

Claude Sonnet 4 is noted for its efficiency and strong performance in high-volume, agentic scenarios, while Claude Opus 4.1 is Anthropic's most powerful model, excelling in complex problem-solving and frontier AI agent capabilities. This dual offering provides Microsoft 365 Copilot users with a robust selection to optimize AI performance for diverse enterprise applications, from customer-facing agents to intricate coding and research.