Microsoft is finding it difficult to get businesses to fully embrace its AI assistant, Copilot, even after companies have paid millions for it. You might expect Microsoft to dominate in this space, but many workers still prefer using ChatGPT instead.
Employees still favour ChatGPT at work
Despite Microsoft’s strong push into the AI workplace with Copilot, businesses that have purchased large-scale subscriptions struggle to get staff on board. According to a report from Bloomberg, pharmaceutical company Amgen purchased 20,000 Copilot licences for its staff in 2024. Over time, however, the company expanded its use of ChatGPT after employees found it effective for tasks like research and summarising scientific documents. While Copilot remains in use—particularly for Microsoft applications like Outlook and Teams—Amgen employees have also turned to ChatGPT.
This mirrors broader workplace trends, where employees familiar with ChatGPT from personal use bring it into their professional routines. As a result, even with official Copilot deployments, many default to the tool they know best—giving ChatGPT a notable edge in day-to-day adoption.
Even though Copilot uses OpenAI’s technology—just like ChatGPT—it hasn’t quite managed to capture the same level of loyalty or daily use. Microsoft designed Copilot to help with everyday office tasks like writing emails, creating summaries, analysing data, and generating images. But its feature list doesn’t seem to be enough to change habits.
ChatGPT races ahead in active users
By June 2025, ChatGPT had reached nearly 800 million weekly active users. About 3 million of those are paying business users. In contrast, Microsoft Copilot has stayed flat, with around 20 million weekly users over the past year. That’s a big gap—especially considering Microsoft’s long-standing dominance in the corporate world through Windows and Office.
Traditionally, Microsoft sales teams used the strength of Windows as a major selling point. Adopting new tools like Copilot should’ve been easy if you were already using Microsoft software. However, according to sources familiar with the situation, that isn’t the case.
One anonymous Microsoft employee explained: “Our salespeople assumed we’d lead the enterprise AI market. After all, we already work with most corporate IT teams. But by the time we started selling Copilot, employees had already formed a bond with ChatGPT.”
Microsoft has secured deals with major companies like Volkswagen, Accenture, and Barclays—each reportedly signing agreements worth tens of millions of US dollars annually covering over 100,000 user accounts. But even with these big-name clients, the tech giant struggles to shift user habits.
Layoffs add to Microsoft’s AI challenges
The timing couldn’t be worse. Microsoft has just confirmed another round of job cuts—between 6,000 and 7,000 roles will be lost globally. That’s nearly 3% of the company’s total workforce. It follows a larger round of layoffs in 2023, when 10,000 employees, or around 5%, were made redundant.
These layoffs have raised questions about Microsoft’s direction, especially as the company invests heavily in AI and enterprise tools like Copilot. While the technology is ready, the people using it may not be.
For now, the gap between Copilot and ChatGPT continues to grow—and unless Microsoft can better connect with everyday users, you may keep hearing the same story from the workplace: when it comes to AI chatbots, ChatGPT still comes first.
