Meta and Microsoft have significantly reduced their internal usage and spending on Anthropic's Claude as the AI startup transforms from a partner into a direct competitor. Microsoft cut its Claude spending by more than a third, dropping the monthly per-employee budget in its cloud division from $100,000 to about $10,000, after executives Scott Guthrie and Jay Parikh directed employees to use in-house tools like GitHub Copilot and OpenAI models instead. Meanwhile, Meta saw Claude Code users drop from roughly 60,000 to 30,000 due to layoffs and a push toward its own internal coding tools like Muse Code and MetaCode.
Cost savings and shifting strategic priorities are driving the pullback, as major tech companies become increasingly wary of funding a rising rival. Meta wanted to restrict Anthropic's access to its training data while selling its own competing products, and Anthropic's rapid growth has positioned its newer workplace tools as threats to established enterprise software offerings.
This corporate realignment highlights the shifting dynamics among major artificial intelligence players as partnerships quickly give way to intense market competition.