Microsoft is asking thousands of its software engineers to work with both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot—and report back on which one works better. The move signals the company’s growing confidence in Anthropic’s AI coding tools, even as it continues to sell GitHub Copilot as its flagship product to enterprise customers.According to a report from The Verge, Microsoft’s CoreAI team and its massive Experiences + Devices division—responsible for Windows, Office, Teams, Edge, and Surface—were instructed last week to install Claude Code. The company is even encouraging non-technical employees like designers and project managers to experiment with the tool for rapid prototyping. Microsoft has also greenlit Claude Code access across all repositories for its Business and Industry Copilot teams.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joins the Claude chorus
The timing couldn’t be more striking. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently told engineers at his $3 trillion company to stop writing code manually and focus on solving “undiscovered problems” instead. Speaking on the No Priors AI podcast recently, Huang revealed that every Nvidia engineer now uses AI coding assistants like Cursor throughout their workday. At the World Economic Forum, he went further, calling Claude “incredible” and urging every software company to adopt it.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella disclosed in April 2025 that up to 30% of Microsoft’s codebase is now AI-generated, a figure that continues to climb. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has made similar claims, stating that over 30% of new code at Google comes from AI. The shift is reshaping how tech giants approach software development—and raising questions about the future of junior developer roles.
What this means for Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI
Microsoft remains deeply committed to its partnership with OpenAI, which powers much of its Copilot infrastructure. Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s communications chief, emphasized that “OpenAI continues to be our primary partner and model provider on frontier models.” But the company signed a separate deal with Anthropic in November, giving Microsoft Foundry customers access to Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5. That agreement also includes Anthropic’s commitment to purchase $30 billion in Azure compute capacity.The internal pilot program reflects a pragmatic reality: developers increasingly rely on multiple AI tools depending on the task. While Microsoft sells GitHub Copilot externally, its willingness to deploy Claude Code internally suggests it may eventually offer Anthropic’s tools to cloud customers as well. For now, the company is betting that letting its engineers compare both platforms will reveal which approach delivers the best results.
