Microsoft Favors Anthropic Over OpenAI For Visual Studio Code

Microsoft is now prioritizing Anthropic's Claude 4 over OpenAI's GPT-5 in Visual Studio Code's auto model feature, signaling a quiet but clear shift in preference. The Verge reports: 'Based on internal benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4 is our recommended model for GitHub Copilot,' said Julia Liuson, head of Microsoft's developer division, in an internal email in June. While that guidance was issued ahead of the GPT-5 release, I understand Microsoft's model guidance hasn't changed.

Microsoft is also making 'significant investments' in training its own AI models. 'We're also going to be making significant investments in our own cluster. So today, MAI-1-preview was only trained on 15,000 H100s, a tiny cluster in the grand scheme of things,' said Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, in an employee-only town hall last week.

Microsoft is also reportedly planning to use Anthropic's AI models for some features in its Microsoft 365 apps soon. The Information reports that the Microsoft 365 Copilot will be 'partly powered by Anthropic models,' after Microsoft found that some of these models outperformed OpenAI in Excel and PowerPoint.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.