The truth no one wants to say out loud is that the AI game is already over. Microsoft won.
Not because Copilot is better than Cursor or Claude Code. Not because they have the best AI. But because they know how to play the game, and they’ve always played it the same way: bundling.
Copilot isn’t just an AI tool. It’s quietly being baked into GitHub, VS Code, Azure, Office, Teams. While everyone else fights for attention, Microsoft gets distribution by default through their enterprise network.
Developers get to pick their favorite toy. Microsoft gets the enterprise deal. It’s as simple as that

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Microsoft has already won the AI competition not through superior technology, but by leveraging their classic bundling strategy. While competitors like Cursor and Claude Code may offer better standalone AI tools, Microsoft is integrating Copilot across their entire ecosystem including GitHub, VS Code, Azure, Office, and Teams. This gives them automatic distribution through existing enterprise relationships, allowing them to capture business deals even when developers prefer other tools.

Microsoft won the AI game before it even started

Depends how you declare “winning.” What you describe makes them (temporarily) profitable merchants of AI. Not superior developers of AI.

Its that baking into that makes it cheap as well and potentially chasing developers away.
I don’t use anything co-pilot. Its within our company in almost every tool and I know almost everyone in the company ignores it. It like that microsoft clipper its just annoying at this point.

The only reason why Microsoft is even valued so high is because of its shady habits of be, “The default option”. As simple as that, you buy a new laptop? Its going to be Windows. You work for a company? They’ll probably give you a windows with Teams and office ready for you. Honestly, they haven’t won the AI race, they have won the distribution of AI race.

<a href="https://app.daily.dev/kramer" data-mention-id="1d339aa5b85c4e0ba85fdedb523c48d4" data-mention-username="kramer" translate="no">@kramer</a> so true. Ubiquity has been the key to Microsoft’s success for a very long time.