Microsoft coaches its sales team to undercut Anthropic and OpenAI on cost and security

7:00 AM · July 15, 2026

Microsoft executives used an internal meeting this week to lay out the company's sales strategy for the fiscal year that began this month, coaching its sales team to more directly and aggressively compete against Anthropic and OpenAI, according to Bloomberg. The pitch to customers centers on cost, security, and completeness: Microsoft is telling salespeople to emphasize that its offerings are cheaper, come with stronger security controls, and sit inside a more complete suite of business products than what Anthropic or OpenAI can offer on their own. The strategy is closely tied to a cost cutting push already underway inside Microsoft, which has been replacing AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic with its own in house models across parts of its Copilot portfolio to reduce the cost of serving AI features to millions of users. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's head of AI, has said publicly that the company pays a lot of money to Anthropic and that its goal is to reduce and ultimately eliminate that cost. The sharpened sales posture marks an escalation in the competitive dynamic between Microsoft and the two labs whose models it has relied on most heavily, even as it continues to maintain partnerships with both.