By joshbersin
Publication Date: 2025-11-30 18:01:00
I just finished diving into the announcements at Microsoft’s Ignite conference and comparing them to the AI blitz from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. I have to say, at this point I think Microsoft is very likely to win a leadership position in the corporate market for AI, with a few big caveats.
Before I explain my thinking, it’s increasingly clear that the big AI vendors are now on the hunt for revenue. Having spent $2 Trillion or more on data centers, chips, and energy we can see all the big providers jockeying for position as they prepare to raise prices, driven by financial analysts ongoing complaints that AI may not be paying off.
At the highest level it appears the market is shaking out as follows:
Microsoft is staking out the market for corporate productivity and AI infrastructure, leveraging its massive Microsoft 365 install base and deep relationships with IT. Consider this week’s announcement of WorkIQ (a system that builds inference on all the workflows,…