Nick Trenkler
• 228k employees
• 80k r&d (all in)
• 25% of the other 148k = 37k
≈117k total claude users among microsoft employees
• opus 4.7 pricing: $5/m input, $25/m output.
• 85% input for agentic coding, 21 work days/mo
r&d, moderate use (15m tok/day):
$120/day × 80k users = ~$202m/mo
rest, light use (5m tok/day):
$40/day × 37k users = ~$31m/mo
total ≈ $233m/mo, or ~$2.8b/year
even at a fraction of this, it's billions flowing to a direct competitor for a tool microsoft can rebuild on azure at near-zero marginal cost
that's the cancellation in one number
🦔Microsoft canceled its internal Claude Code licenses this week after token-based billing made the cost untenable, even for a company with effectively infinite cloud resources. Uber's CTO sent an internal memo warning the company burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in just… pic.twitter.com/zBGccaP3e6
— Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) May 21, 2026
