ai
Microsoft to Cancel Most Claude Code Licenses by End of June
Microsoft will remove most Claude Code licenses at the end of its financial year on June 30 and transition developers in its Experiences + Devices group to GitHub Copilot CLI. The company began offering Claude Code to thousands of employees in December as an experiment to encourage non-coders to prototype ideas.
May 14, 2:52 PM·2m read1 source
The VergeAudio version
Tap play to generate a narrated version.
Developing·Limited corroboration so far. This page will refresh as more sources emerge.
Microsoft is canceling the majority of its Claude Code licenses and directing developers to use GitHub Copilot CLI instead. The company first opened access to Anthropic’s Claude Code tool in December, inviting thousands of its own developers, project managers and designers to experiment with coding daily.
Sources told The Verge that Claude Code proved popular inside the company over the following six months. Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices group, which is responsible for Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Surface, will wind down its use of Claude Code by June 30.
Engineers are being encouraged to transition their workflows to GitHub Copilot CLI in the coming weeks. The cutoff coincides with the end of Microsoft’s current financial year. The company told employees the move is intended to converge on Copilot CLI as its main agentic command line interface tool.
Sources told The Verge the decision is also driven by a desire to reduce operating expenses as the new financial year begins in July.
“When we began offering both Copilot CLI and Claude Code, our goal was to learn quickly, benchmark the tools in real engineering workflows, and understand what best supported our teams,” Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft’s experiences and devices group, said in an internal memo.
” Microsoft had encouraged employees without coding experience to try Claude Code for prototyping. The company originally expected staff to use both tools in parallel to compare them and provide feedback. In recent months, however, Microsoft’s developers have favored Claude Code over GitHub Copilot CLI.
