Microsoft is quietly reshaping its artificial intelligence landscape. According to informed sources, Microsoft has become a top client of the AI startup Anthropic, with annual technology procurement costs expected to reach nearly $500 million in the near future. This funding will mainly be used to purchase Anthropic's advanced technologies to support the intelligent upgrades of Microsoft's various products.

To gain a stronger position in the cloud services market, Microsoft has made significant adjustments to internal sales performance metrics. Sales personnel in the Azure cloud business department have been notified that promoting Anthropic's artificial intelligence models will carry the same performance weight as selling Microsoft's in-house software. Such incentives are typically reserved for in-house products or deeply integrated partners, and this move has significantly boosted the sales team's enthusiasm for promoting Anthropic's products, placing them on par with OpenAI in competition.

Microsoft's move is seen as a shrewd "risk diversification" strategy. Although Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, by deepening its collaboration with Anthropic, Microsoft can avoid over-reliance on a single technology supplier. More importantly, Anthropic's strong performance in code generation and complex logic tasks can attract more enterprise customers seeking diverse AI capabilities to Azure, giving Microsoft an edge in the competition against Google and Amazon.

Currently, Microsoft and Anthropic's sales teams have launched close cooperation. This "giant + emerging star" combination not only provides enterprise customers with higher security cloud-based AI solutions but also signals that Microsoft is accelerating the integration of cutting-edge automation technologies into its ecosystem.

Key Points:

💰 Heavy Investment: Microsoft's annual technology procurement costs for Anthropic are expected to reach $500 million, and it has already committed to investing up to $5 billion as of last September.

📈 Sales Incentives: Microsoft has unusually included the third-party model Anthropic in the core performance evaluation of sales personnel, with incentives comparable to those for OpenAI.

🛡️ Strategic Balance: By introducing complementary technologies from Anthropic, Microsoft aims to diversify technological risks and leverage its strengths in code generation to enhance the competitiveness of Azure cloud services.