How Microsoft's $2B-a-year Anthropic bet fixed Copilot and made Charles Lamanna CEO heir apparent
APPSO · wechat · 2026-10-15
A deep dive (via The Information) on how Microsoft exec Charles Lamanna convinced Satya Nadella to pay Anthropic over $2B a year for Copilot.
- In 2025 Copilot was drowning in complaints; Lamanna challenged the company's "model monogamy" with OpenAI, demonstrating Anthropic's models were clearly stronger at Excel math and PowerPoint generation.
- Turning points: making "agent mode" the default this spring and building an internal model router that picks the cheapest model per task, improving gross margins. Enterprise Copilot users doubled past 30M; AT&T expanded to 18K seats.
- Nadella handed Lamanna thousands of Copilot engineers and the Office business; he now leads 25,000 people and attends quarterly board meetings, widely viewed as a top CEO successor candidate.
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