Microsoft says it has more than 20 million paid Copilot users, and they’re already using it

Despite the widespread perception that no one really uses Copilot, Microsoft said on Wednesday that its user base and engagement is growing for the AI ​​tool built into M365 applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook email.

M365 Copilot now has 20 million paid enterprise seats, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the company’s quarterly earnings conference call.

Nadella said that the company has quadrupled the number of companies paying for more than 50,000 seats, noting that Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes and Roche have more than 90,000 seats. He pointed to the deal announced earlier this week with Accenture for more than 740,000 seats. “Our biggest co-pilot win to date,” he said.

Plus, he insists that people use it and interact with Copilot as much as they do email.

“Per-user search queries are up approximately 20% quarter-on-quarter. To put this momentum into perspective, weekly engagement is now on par with Outlook,” he said. “This is like a daily habit of heavy use.”

He emphasized that Copilot does not rely on a single model like OpenAI.

“You now have access in chat to multiple models by default, and with intelligent auto-routing in agents offering criticism and advice, you can use multiple models together to generate the perfect responses,” he said.

Microsoft 365 supports Anthropic’s Claude, for example.

In fact, “Microsoft 365 Copilot numbers are very impressive and I think they beat most people’s expectations,” Morgan Stanley’s Keith Weiss said on Wednesday’s quarterly earnings call.

Proxy mode is one area driving usage, noting that “as of last week, Proxy mode is now the default experience across Copilot, Word Excel, and PowerPoint.”

Microsoft last week made its Copilot agent capabilities generally available. This allows Copilot to take multi-step actions directly in documents. “You now have a new way to delegate and complete work with Copilot,” Nadella said.