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Microsoft Adds Anthropic AI Models to 365 Copilot, Expanding Beyond OpenAI

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Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it is integrating Anthropic’s AI models into its Copilot assistant, marking a strategic move to diversify beyond its close partnership with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

While OpenAI’s models will continue to power Copilot by default, users will now be able to choose Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 for tasks within Copilot’s “Researcher” tool and when building custom agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Starting this week, users who opt in to test Claude will be able to switch seamlessly between OpenAI and Anthropic models in Researcher, said Charles Lamanna, president of Microsoft’s business and industry Copilot division.

The shift underscores Microsoft’s effort to broaden the foundation of its AI services. Until now, Copilot’s advanced features across apps such as Word and Outlook have relied primarily on OpenAI.

Although Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest investor, the company has also been developing its own models and integrating those from other AI firms. Earlier this year, it announced plans to offer models from Elon Musk’s xAI and Meta Platforms, all hosted within its data centers. Models from China’s DeepSeek have also been added to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

Anthropic’s Claude models, however, are primarily hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a direct competitor to Microsoft Azure, highlighting a rare cross-cloud collaboration.

Oracle in talks for $20B AI cloud deal with Meta

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Oracle is negotiating a multi-year cloud computing contract with Meta worth about $20 billion, a source told Reuters on Friday, highlighting the social media giant’s urgent push to secure computing capacity for AI development.

Under the potential deal, Oracle would provide infrastructure for training and deploying AI models, supplementing Meta’s existing cloud partnerships. Neither company commented on the report.

The talks come just days after news that OpenAI signed a landmark agreement to buy $300 billion worth of computing power from Oracle over five years—one of the largest cloud deals ever recorded.

Oracle, once known primarily for enterprise software, has rapidly repositioned itself as a heavyweight in cloud infrastructure through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). It has partnered with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to allow their customers to run Oracle workloads alongside native services. Revenue from these tie-ups surged more than 16x in Q1.

In recent weeks, Oracle has announced four additional multi-billion-dollar contracts as AI firms such as OpenAI, Musk’s xAI, and now Meta aggressively lock in long-term capacity. Oracle said it expects to sign more mega-customers in the coming months, projecting over half a trillion dollars in booked OCI revenue.

If finalized, the Meta deal would further cement Oracle as a critical player in the AI infrastructure race, rivaling traditional hyperscalers and underscoring just how central cloud power has become in the battle for AI dominance.

Musk denies $10B fundraising at xAI after CNBC report

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Elon Musk pushed back on Friday against a CNBC report that his AI startup xAI was raising $10 billion at a post-money valuation of $200 billion. “Fake news. xAI is not raising any capital right now,” Musk wrote on X, dismissing claims the firm was in talks with investors.

CNBC had reported that the funds would be used to build massive data centers with Nvidia and AMD GPUs and recruit top AI talent as xAI ramps up to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. The company operates the Colossus supercomputer cluster in Memphis, Tennessee, which Musk has described as the world’s largest.

Investor interest in AI firms remains strong despite questions over the sustainability of big tech spending. If true, the $200B valuation would have more than doubled xAI’s reported $75B valuation in July and placed it among the world’s most valuable private companies—behind OpenAI, ByteDance, and SpaceX, but ahead of Anthropic, which recently raised funds at a $183B valuation.

Musk’s denial comes amid conflicting signals. In June, Morgan Stanley reported that xAI had already raised $5B in debt financing alongside a $5B strategic equity investment to expand its infrastructure. While Musk insists no new round is underway, xAI continues to scale aggressively, seeking to establish itself as a rival to OpenAI, which may soon be valued at $500B in a planned stock sale.