{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-10-12T22:30:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-the-information-microsoft-2b-anthropic-copilot-lamanna/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-the-information-microsoft-2b-anthropic-copilot-lamanna/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"Adam Bicz","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-10-12-the-information-microsoft-2b-anthropic-copilot-lamanna","date":"2026-10-12","date_precision":"day","short_title":"The Information: Microsoft is on track to pay Anthropic more than $2B a year for Claude in Copilot; profile of Office chief Charles Lamanna","deck":null,"takeaway":null,"category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":3,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Official Microsoft Blog: Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn leadership update (Oct 1, 2026)","url":"https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/10/01/microsoft-365-and-linkedin-leadership-update/","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"blogs.microsoft.com"},{"n":2,"title":"The Information: How Microsoft's New Office Chief Fixed Copilot and Won Over Nadella","url":"https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsofts-new-office-chief-fixed-copilot-won-nadella","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"theinformation.com"},{"n":3,"title":"Techmeme headline (Oct 12, 2026)","url":"https://www.techmeme.com/261012/p23","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"techmeme.com"},{"n":4,"title":"AI Weekly: Microsoft on Track to Pay Anthropic $2B+ a Year for Copilot","url":"https://aiweekly.co/alerts/the-information-microsoft-on-track-to-pay-anthropic-2b-per-year-as-copilot","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"aiweekly.co"},{"n":5,"title":"PYMNTS (Jan 2026): Microsoft Spending on Anthropic Approaches $500 Million a Year","url":"https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/microsoft-spending-on-anthropic-approaches-500-million-a-year/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"pymnts.com"}],"official":1,"filed":"2026-10-12","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["Microsoft","Anthropic"],"title":"The Information: Microsoft is on track to pay Anthropic more than $2B a year for Claude in Copilot; profile of Office chief Charles Lamanna","summary":"The Information reported on Oct 12, 2026, citing one source, that Microsoft is on track to pay Anthropic more than $2 billion a year for models that power Copilot, four times the roughly $500 million a year it reported in January. The figure appears in a profile of Charles Lamanna, the executive who runs Microsoft 365 apps and Copilot, who pushed Satya Nadella to buy Claude despite its higher cost and whom senior executives name as a possible successor to Nadella.","key_facts":["Source: The Information (Aaron Holmes), Oct 12, 2026, paywalled; this entry is written from the Techmeme headline and AI Weekly's summary","A source said Microsoft is 'on track to pay Anthropic more than $2B per year'; one outlet, one anonymous source","In January 2026 The Information put the same spending at about $500M a year (per PYMNTS)","Lamanna made the case while customers complained that Copilot was, in the outlet's words, 'buggy and not good enough at automating work in Excel or PowerPoint'","Anthropic's models did better at tasks such as automating financial functions in Excel and generating PowerPoint decks; Claude is blended with OpenAI models in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint","Lamanna is still 'weighing Anthropic and OpenAI models to improve capabilities and margins'","Lamanna took over the Office teams on Oct 1, 2026, when Microsoft announced that LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 chief Ryan Roslansky is leaving (Microsoft blog)","Several senior Microsoft executives name Lamanna as a potential successor to CEO Satya Nadella","Not stated in the summaries: what Microsoft buys (API inference or reserved capacity) and how the cost is shared"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["microsoft","anthropic","copilot","office","claude","revenue","enterprise","openai"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nThe Information published a profile of Charles Lamanna, who already led Copilot and took over the Office teams on Oct 1, 2026, when\nMicrosoft announced that Ryan Roslansky is leaving (Nadella's memo: \"Sumit Chauhan and Lan Ye will report to Charles Lamanna\"). The article is paywalled and was not read directly. According to summaries of it, Lamanna persuaded Nadella to pay for Anthropic's models\nwhen customers were unhappy with Copilot's work in Excel and PowerPoint, over internal objections about cost. A source told the\noutlet that Microsoft's payments to Anthropic are now on track to exceed $2 billion a year.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nMicrosoft is OpenAI's long-time investor and primary cloud partner, yet its main productivity product now depends in part on OpenAI's\nclosest rival, and the spending has grown about fourfold in nine months if both reports are right. A week earlier The Information\nreported that Microsoft had cut its employees' own Claude use by more than a third, so the company is both a growing customer of\nAnthropic and one trying to limit that bill.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-10-12-microsoft-maia-300","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-microsoft-maia-300/","date":"2026-10-12","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Microsoft announces Maia 300, its third in-house AI chip, and plans multi-gigawatt Maia deployments from 2027","deck":null,"takeaway":"Microsoft is the largest buyer of Nvidia GPUs among cloud companies, and it now states that its own chip will be its main inference system from 2027.","category":"hardware-compute","category_label":"Chips & compute","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":2,"filed":"2026-10-12","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["Microsoft"]},{"id":"2026-10-10-nadella-models-as-insider-risks","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-10-nadella-models-as-insider-risks/","date":"2026-10-10","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Nadella's X Article 'Models as Insider Risks in the Super Intelligence Era'","deck":"Treat frontier models like insiders who may be compromised, and make CoT transparency non-negotiable","takeaway":"On Oct 10, 2026 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published an X Article arguing that today's \"Super Intelligence systems\" are nested black boxes that cannot be trusted on a provider's word.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":8,"official":1,"filed":"2026-10-10","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["Microsoft"]},{"id":"2026-10-05-meta-microsoft-cut-staff-claude-use","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-05-meta-microsoft-cut-staff-claude-use/","date":"2026-10-05","date_precision":"day","short_title":"The Information: Meta and Microsoft work to wean employees off Claude","deck":"Meta's Claude Code users halve to ~30K","takeaway":"Big-tech internal seats were a visible part of Claude Code's growth.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":3,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":10,"official":0,"filed":"2026-10-05","updated":"2026-10-08","orgs":["Meta","Microsoft","Anthropic"]},{"id":"2026-09-25-microsoft-new-copilot-home-code-autopilot","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-25-microsoft-new-copilot-home-code-autopilot/","date":"2026-09-25","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Microsoft unveils the 'new Copilot' with Home, Code and Autopilot agents, offering Astra and Fable models","deck":null,"takeaway":"Microsoft is moving from per-seat assistant pricing to metered agents, and treats frontier models from rival labs as interchangeable components.","category":"product","category_label":"Products","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":10,"official":5,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-30","orgs":["Microsoft"]},{"id":"2026-04-27-microsoft-openai-deal-restructured","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-04-27-microsoft-openai-deal-restructured/","date":"2026-04-27","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Microsoft and OpenAI restructure partnership, drop the AGI clause and exclusivity","deck":null,"takeaway":"The change freed Microsoft to push its own first-party MAI models.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":4,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":0,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Microsoft","OpenAI"]}],"people":[{"id":"satya-nadella","name":"Satya Nadella","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/satya-nadella/"}],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-10-12","type":"filed","text":"Created (evening). Written from summaries; the original is paywalled"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-10-12","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-10-12","human_review":null,"version":null},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":165,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":104,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-3-8-flash","name":"Gemini 3.8 Flash","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":195,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":134,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}