Microsoft Secures Major AI Deal with Barclays, Highlights Growing Enterprise Adoption of Copilot

Microsoft Touts AI Sales at Town Hall, Reveals Barclays Contract

Microsoft Corp. touted its progress selling artificial intelligence tools to corporate customers during a companywide town hall on Thursday, including a major deal with Barclays Plc. Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff told employees that Barclays agreed to buy 100,000 licenses for Microsoft's Copilot AI assistants, according to people familiar with the event. Althoff also said multiple dozen customers -- including Accenture Plc, Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG and Siemens AG -- have over 100,000 Copilot users, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal remarks.

Barclays Bank signs 100k license Copilot deal with Microsoft

High-profile logo win for AI? Weeks ahead of year-end and with investors twitchy about returns? Impeccable timing Microsoft yesterday used a town hall meeting to leak details tell staff about a 100,000 license contract signed with Barclays to use Copilot. Or so says a report in Bloomberg, which quoted loquacious sources that asked for anonymity before they discussed comments they say were made by Microsoft's chief commercial officer Judson Althoff. Althoff also told the town hall meeting about the multiple dozen other similarly sized agreements Microsoft has signed with customers that adopted Copilot, reportedly including Toyota, Volkswagen AG, Accenture, and Siemens AG. Microsoft refused to comment when asked about the deal by The Register, as did Barclays and Accenture. We asked the other remaining corporations if they had anything to say, and - at the time of writing - only Siemens had confirmed its agreement. At $30 per seat, these deals would equate to tens of millions of dollars in enterprise customer spending that Microsoft has managed to secure - a drop in the ocean when compared to the billions of dollars Microsoft has sunk into AI via investments in OpenAI, and the massive financial outlay on datacenters, forecast to be $80 billion in this calendar year alone. Still, the timing of the information released at the town hall is impeccable, coming as Microsoft enters its final month of fiscal 2025 and around seven weeks before it makes public the profit and loss accounts for the financial year ending June 30. Shareholders want to know that Microsoft is putting the money to good use, and some are itching to get a clear sense of the expected returns. Jared Spataro, corporate veep of Modern Work & Business Applications at Microsoft previously tried to temper those expectations in March last year when he told the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom 2024 conference, that investors shouldn't expect quick returns. He said Microsoft was spending time with customers "showing them and then helping them realize that value," which at $30 per month is "a substantial price tag for sure." "People are definitely trying understand, who should I get this for? Is this for everyone in my organization? Is this for a certain segment or population? "And it's just based on hard facts. Are we saving enough in terms of time? Are we generating enough value? Previous Microsoft-commissioned research found Copilot testers worked 29 percent faster, and 77 percent that used it for two weeks found it indispensable." Microsoft hasn't publicly confirmed how much money its standalone AI efforts are bringing in, nor the totality of customers that have bought licenses. Barclays Bank says it employs 85,000 people across 40 countries, so the 100,000 seat agreement seems a bit top heavy; perhaps it also covers contractors or was set at that level to achieve a certain volume price reduction. Either way, it gives Barclays some wiggle room for headcount growth. Securing Barclays would be a good look for Microsoft, it's a high profile logo. A source close to Microsoft told us they suspect the agreement was heavily discounted in terms of the price of the product and other aspects, such as services. "What is Barclays actually paying?" they asked. Barclays already has a relationship with Microsoft and in 2022 agreed a multi-year deal for Teams, in and among the other Microsoft wares its uses including M365 and Security Solutions. The customer wins for Microsoft come against the backdrop of some caution toward AI from enterprise customers, especially around security and corporate governance. Jack Berkowitz, chief data officer of Securiti, told us last summer that security and oversight concerns are commonplace. "Particularly around bigger companies that have complex permissions around their SharePoint or their Office 365 or things like that, where the Copilots are basically aggressively summarizing information that maybe people technically have access to but shouldn't have access to," he said. Gartner estimated in July last year that at least 30 percent of GenAI projects are going to be ditched after the proof of concept phase by the end of 2025, and it said in September: "It is really easy to waste money on generative AI," as "500 to 1,000 percent errors of AI cost estimates are possible." Equinix president and CEO Adaire Fox-Martin said at Citi's 2024 Global Technology Media and Telecom Conference in September last year: "From my conversations with our customers, many of them are working through the business case, the actual business value that taking this proof of concept into production will release for them." Fox-Martin added: "And they're not always easy business cases to resolve. My take is that it will be a 12 to 18-month journey before we see the significant impact of that." As for its agreement with Microsoft, Siemens said it has bought Copilot for Office licenses for some but not all of its employees. A spokesperson at Siemens told us some staff have access to Microsoft Copilot internally and are being encouraged to use it daily. ®

Microsoft and Barclays Bank sign major Copilot license deal

Microsoft has signed multiple similar deals with other companies like Siemens Microsoft recently announced in a town hall meeting that it has signed an agreement with Barclays bank, in which it will provide 100,000 Copilot AI assistance licenses. Microsoft's Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff recently revealed to company town hall attendants, "multiple dozen" customers have over 100,000 Copilot users, including Volkswagen, Siemens, and Toyota - deals which could each bring in tens of millions per year for Microsoft. The official price of a single license is $30 per month, but large deals such as the rumored Barclays agreement are likely to come with a discount. Microsoft has invested heavily into AI, and is forecast to spend $80 billion on the technology in 2025, and the tens of millions made in these deals are unlikely to make a dent into the firm's spending. The company refused to comment on the Barclays deal when asked by The Register - TechRadar Pro has asked seperately. The two companies have a history of working together, with The Register noting they agreed a multi-year deal for Microsoft Teams usage back in August 2022. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has emphasized a focus on user engagement over pure sales statistics, and despite remaining profitable, Microsoft has announced largescale layoffs, with between 6,000 and 7,000 jobs worldwide expected to be cut - equating to almost 3% of the firm's workforce - just two years after 10,000 personnel were made redundant (5% of the workforce). "We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace," a company spokesperson confirmed. "This was not about people failing. It was about repositioning for what comes next," Nadella said at the time, who went on to stress that where Copilot is concerned, "adoption is key" - arguing that organisations need to fully integrate the assistant technology into their daily workflows in order to unlock its full potential.

Microsoft Touts AI Sales at Town Hall, Reveals Barclays Contract

The company is considered a leader in commercialising AI products Microsoft touted its progress selling Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to corporate customers during a companywide town hall on Thursday, including a major deal with Barclays Plc. Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff told employees that Barclays agreed to buy 100,000 licenses for Microsoft's Copilot AI assistants, according to people familiar with the event. Althoff also said multiple dozen customers -- including Accenture, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen AG and Siemens AG -- have over 100,000 Copilot users, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal remarks. Microsoft is focused on driving adoption of Copilot and is closely tracking what share of customer workforces are using the tools, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said during the event. At list prices of $30 (roughly Rs. 2,566) per user per month, the deals cited by Althoff would each be worth tens of millions of dollars per year -- though large customers typically get bulk discounts. Microsoft declined to comment. Representatives of Barclays, Accenture, Toyota, Volkswagen and Siemens didn't comment. The world's largest software maker is considered a leader in commercializing AI products, thanks to its close partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and has been embedding Copilot in its suite of productivity applications. Still, Wall Street has been anxious to see evidence that the multibillion-dollar bet is paying off. In January, Microsoft said that its AI suite -- including cloud infrastructure and AI applications -- was on pace to bring in at least $13 billion (roughly Rs. 111,211 crore) in annual revenue. The company has offered plentiful anecdotes describing how corporate customers are taking up Copilot, Microsoft's signature AI product, but hasn't disclosed a total customer count or the financial impact of those sales. Some corporate clients say the tools require plenty of internal tweaks and employee training, and many describe their use of Copilot as a measured rollout and series of trials, rather than a rush to equip all of their personnel with the pricey software. Weeks after announcing plans to axe 6,000 workers, or about three percent of the workforce, the company also has reason to rally the troops. Nadella began the meeting by addressing the cuts, saying that they were related to a reorganization rather than performance. The terminations fell hardest on the people who build the company's products, showing that even engineering jobs aren't guaranteed in the age of AI. © 2025 Bloomberg LP