Microsoft Pushes Salespeople to Badmouth AI Partners Weeks After New Consulting Business Launch

On July 2, 2026, Microsoft launched a $2.5 billion AI consulting business built on software from two partner companies, OpenAI and Anthropic. Twelve days later, executives told salespeople to pitch those same partners' products as inferior to Microsoft's own. One executive claimed Anthropic's Claude tool was "slower and less accurate" and lacked proper Office security integrations.