I’m told that Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices team, which includes the engineers responsible for Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Surface, is winding down its usage of Claude Code by the end of June. Sources tell me that engineers are being encouraged to start transitioning their workflows to GitHub Copilot CLI in the coming weeks, ahead of the cutoff.

Microsoft is telling employees that the decision is about converging on Copilot CLI as its main agentic command line interface tool across Experiences + Devices, but sources tell me the decision is also a financial one. The June 30th cutoff is the last day of Microsoft’s current financial year, and canceling Claude Code licenses is an easy way to cut some operating expenses for when the new financial year starts in July.

“When we began offering both Copilot CLI and Claude Code, our goal was to learn quickly, benchmark the tools in real engineering workflows, and understand what best supported our teams,” says Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft’s experiences and devices group, in an internal memo seen by Notepad. “Claude Code was an important part of that learning… at the same time, Copilot CLI has given us something especially important: a product we can help shape directly with GitHub for Microsoft’s repos, workflows, security expectations, and engineering needs.”

The transition away from Claude Code won’t be an easy one for engineers inside Microsoft, though. Microsoft had been encouraging employees without any coding experience to experiment with Claude Code, allowing designers and project managers to prototype ideas. Microsoft had also originally expected employees to use both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, to compare the two and provide feedback.