By Hillary Remy
Publication Date: 2026-05-25 19:37:00
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed earlier this year that the company now writes up to 30% of its code using generative AI. The company has invested $13 billion in OpenAI. It built GitHub Copilot. It has made AI central to every product in its portfolio.
On May 14, Microsoft (MSFT) sent thousands of its own engineers a message that cuts against that narrative in a very specific way.
What Microsoft told its Experiences and Devices engineers
Microsoft is cancelling most internal Claude Code licenses across its Experiences and Devices division, the team responsible for Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, and Surface, with a deadline of June 30, 2026, according to TechRadar. Engineers are being directed to switch to GitHub Copilot CLI, Microsoft’s own command-line AI coding tool.
The story was first reported by The Verge’s Tom Warren on May 14 via his Notepad newsletter. Warren noted that Claude Code had become “perhaps a little too popular” inside Microsoft,…
