Microsoft says it has over 20M paid Copilot users, and they really are using it

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed during the company's quarterly earnings call that M365 Copilot now has 20 million paid enterprise seats, quadrupling the number of companies with over 50,000 seats. Major clients include Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes, and Roche, each with more than 90,000 seats, plus a landmark 740,000-seat deal with Accenture—described as 'our largest Copilot win to date.' Nadella emphasized that engagement is robust, with queries per user up nearly 20% quarter-over-quarter and weekly engagement now matching Outlook's usage levels. He called it 'a daily habit of intense usage,' countering the perception that the AI tool isn't being used.

Copilot's agent mode, which became the default last week in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, drives much of this engagement by allowing multi-step actions directly in documents. Nadella highlighted that Copilot isn't tied to a single AI model, supporting multiple models via intelligent auto-routing—including Anthropic's Claude. Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss called the numbers 'super impressive and way ahead of most people’s expectations.' This growth signals that enterprise AI assistants are becoming core productivity tools, not just experimental features.