Microsoft Says Copilot Hits 20 Million Seats With Rising Usage in Office Apps

Microsoft said that its Microsoft 365 Copilot has reached 20 million paid enterprise seats, with usage rising as the company expands the AI assistant across Word, Excel, Outlook, and other core workplace apps.

CEO Satya Nadella disclosed the figures during the company’s quarterly earnings call, highlighting both growth in large deployments and increasing engagement. The number of organizations with more than 50,000 seats has quadrupled, with companies such as Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes, and Roche each exceeding 90,000 seats. Earlier this week, Microsoft also announced a deal with Accenture covering more than 740,000 seats, which Nadella described as “our largest Copilot win to date.”

Microsoft emphasized that usage is keeping pace with adoption. “Copilot queries per user were up nearly 20% quarter over quarter,” Nadella said, adding that weekly engagement has reached the same level as Outlook. “This is like a daily habit of intense usage.”

The company also pointed to architectural changes aimed at improving performance and flexibility. Copilot now supports multiple AI models with automatic routing, rather than relying on a single provider. “You now have access in chat to multiple models by default, with intelligent auto routing in agents with critique and counsel,” Nadella said, noting that Anthropic’s Claude is among the supported models.

A key driver of recent engagement has been the rollout of “agent mode,” which became the default experience across Copilot and Microsoft 365 apps including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The feature allows the assistant to carry out multi-step tasks directly within documents. “You now have a new way to delegate and complete work using Copilot,” Nadella said.

The update reflects Microsoft’s effort to deepen Copilot’s role inside everyday workflows, as the company scales enterprise adoption while expanding the assistant’s capabilities across its productivity suite.

This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.

Image courtesy of Microsoft.

This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.