U jelly? Corporate customers choose ChatGPT over Microsoft Copilot despite $10B+ investment

Microsoft faces an embarrassing competitive dilemma with its AI partner OpenAI, as corporate customers consistently prefer ChatGPT over Microsoft’s Copilot assistant despite the tech giant’s tens of billions in investment. The preference gap is creating awkward sales situations for Microsoft and highlighting the risks of partnering with a direct competitor in the fast-moving AI market.

What you should know: Major corporations are choosing ChatGPT over Copilot even when they’ve purchased Microsoft’s AI assistant for thousands of employees.

• New York Life Insurance Co., a major U.S. life insurance provider, bought both products to let employees decide which they prefer.
• Pharmaceutical company Amgen purchased Copilot for 20,000 staff members, but employees largely ignore it in favor of ChatGPT.
• Management consulting firm Bain & Company deployed ChatGPT to 16,000 employees, with only 2,000 regularly using Copilot.

Why employees prefer ChatGPT: Workers consistently find OpenAI’s tool more effective and enjoyable for core AI tasks like research and document summarization.

• “OpenAI has done a tremendous job making their product fun to use,” said John Bruich, Amgen’s senior vice president.
• Employees only use Copilot when forced to by Microsoft-specific applications like Outlook and Teams.
• Bain & Co’s chief technology officer Ramesh Razdan noted that Copilot is “improving, but I don’t think it’s at the same level.”

Microsoft’s timing problem: The company’s late entry into the AI assistant market allowed competitors to establish user preferences first.

• Copilot launched in November 2023, a full year after ChatGPT’s debut.
• Corporate employees had already begun experimenting with ChatGPT before Microsoft’s product became available.
• OpenAI updates take weeks to integrate into Copilot due to Microsoft’s testing requirements.

The big picture: This competitive dynamic creates an unusual situation where Microsoft is simultaneously investing billions in OpenAI while losing customers to the same company in direct competition.

• Microsoft workplace AI leader Jared Spataro defends the slower update process, explaining that “not every change that is being made to the models actually is net positive.”
• The partnership’s future remains uncertain as both companies navigate their complex relationship behind the scenes.