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Microsoft Copilot has 20M+ paid users, Nadella counters low-adoption narrative
30 Apr 2026

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, has confirmed that the company's AI tool, Copilot, is witnessing tremendous growth in usage and adoption.

The announcement was made during a quarterly earnings call where Nadella revealed that Microsoft 365 Copilot now has 20 million paid enterprise Copilot seats.

This comes amid widespread speculation about the actual usage of the tool among users.

Large-scale deployments quadrupled
Adoption surge

Nadella also noted a significant increase in large-scale deployments of Copilot. The number of companies using over 50,000 seats has quadrupled.

Major corporations such as Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes-Benz, and Roche have more than 90,000 seats each.

A recent deal with Accenture for over 740,000 seats was also highlighted by Nadella as "our largest Copilot win to date."

Copilot queries on par with Outlook
User engagement

Addressing concerns over actual usage, Nadella said that engagement levels are on the rise.

He noted that "Copilot queries per user were up nearly 20% quarter over quarter."

To put this growth into perspective, he added, weekly engagement is now at the same level as Outlook.

This shows users are engaging with Copilot as often as they do with their email.

Copilot not tied to a single AI model
Feature expansion

Nadella also stressed that Copilot is not tied to a single AI model.

"You now have access in chat to multiple models by default, with intelligent auto routing in agents with critique and counsel, you can use multiple models together to generate optimal responses," he said.

The company also said its "agent mode" is driving usage by letting Copilot complete multi-step tasks directly within apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.