Meta and Microsoft, key corporate customers of Anthropic, are reducing employees’ use of Claude, The Information reported on Oct. 6.

Microsoft expected in early 2026 to spend at least $1 billion on internal Claude use. It later cut that amount by more than a third by asking employees to use its own AI tools instead of Claude to reduce costs.

Microsoft reduced Claude Code subscriptions and had employees use Claude through GitHub Copilot. Copilot’s automatic mode sends most queries to OpenAI models. Microsoft does not pay usage fees for OpenAI models because of its business relationship with OpenAI. Microsoft’s Cloud & AI organisation, which employs more than 60,000 people, lowered the monthly AI usage cap per employee to about $10,000 from $100,000 in most cases, The Information reported.

Jay Parikh (제이 파리크), head of Microsoft’s developer tools business, said in an August internal memo, "Moving more work to OpenAI models delivers greater value from our token investment."

Meta is taking a similar approach. Meta’s Claude Code users fell to about 30,000 recently from about 60,000 in early 2026. Layoffs in the spring had an impact, but the expansion of its own AI coding tools had a bigger effect.

About 6,000 employees use Muse Code, a coding tool based on Meta models, and more than 30,000 use an internal-only tool called Metacode. Meta spent more than $105 million on Claude Code over the past 28 days.

Both companies are still major customers of Claude. Microsoft pays at least $2 billion a year to use Anthropic models in Copilot features it provides to customers.

The increased customer-related spending largely offset the reduced internal spending, and the total amount Microsoft pays to Anthropic is similar to the peak earlier this year, The Information reported.

Even so, moves by prominent companies to reduce Claude use could be a burden for Anthropic as it prepares for an initial public offering. With rivals such as OpenAI and Google offering lower prices than Anthropic, some companies are looking for cheaper alternatives. O

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that it switched the default internal AI coding model to OpenAI. The spokesperson said engineers can still choose to use Claude.