Microsoft touts AI sales at town hall, reveals Barclays contract

MICROSOFT touted its progress selling artificial intelligence tools to corporate customers during a companywide town hall on Thursday, including a major deal with Barclays.

Chief commercial officer Judson Althoff told employees that Barclays agreed to buy 100,000 licenses for Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistants, according to people familiar with the event.

Althoff also said multiple dozen customers — including Accenture, Toyota, Volkswagen AG and Siemens AG — have over 100,000 Copilot users, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal remarks.

Microsoft is focused on driving adoption of Copilot and is closely tracking what share of customer workforces are using the tools, chief executive officer Satya Nadella said during the event.

At list prices of US$30 per user per month, the deals cited by Althoff would each be worth tens of millions of dollars per year — though large customers typically get bulk discounts.

Microsoft declined to comment. Representatives of Barclays, Accenture, Toyota, Volkswagen and Siemens didn’t comment.

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The world’s largest software maker is considered a leader in commercialising AI products, thanks to its close partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and has been embedding Copilot in its suite of productivity applications.

Still, Wall Street has been anxious to see evidence that the multibillion-dollar bet is paying off.

In January, Microsoft said that its AI suite — including cloud infrastructure and AI applications — was on pace to bring in at least US$13 billion in annual revenue.

The company has offered plentiful anecdotes describing how corporate customers are taking up Copilot, Microsoft’s signature AI product, but hasn’t disclosed a total customer count or the financial impact of those sales.

Some corporate clients say the tools require plenty of internal tweaks and employee training, and many describe their use of Copilot as a measured rollout and series of trials, rather than a rush to equip all of their personnel with the pricey software.

Weeks after announcing plans to axe 6,000 workers, or about 3 per cent of the workforce, the company also has reason to rally the troops.

Nadella began the meeting by addressing the cuts, saying that they were related to a reorganisation rather than performance.

The terminations fell hardest on the people who build the company’s products, showing that even engineering jobs aren’t guaranteed in the age of artificial intelligence. BLOOMBERG