On Tuesday, Microsoft made a series of announcements during its Inspire Partner Even, including the pricing details for its enterprise AI software tools.

 

These announcements created new announcements for this tech giant, and following the event, Microsoft's stock price temporarily reached a new all-time high of $366.78 but eventually closed at $359.49, still marking a 4% jump.

 

The most eye-catching part is Microsoft’s pricing strategy for the Office 365 Copilot, a collaborative AI system developed by Microsoft and OpenAI. According to Microsoft, each enterprise user of Office 365 will need to pay an additional amount of $30 per month to utilize the long-anticipated feature, and the $30/month pricing for Copilot will apply to Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium customers.

 

Currently, Business Standard and Business Premium users are respectively charged $12.5 and $22 per month while E3 and E5 cost $36 and $57 per month. Therefore, adding the AI feature would not be cheap for most Microsoft customers: For E3 users, adding Copilot would mean an 83% increase in cost, while for Business Standard users, the cost would almost double.

 

In March, the release of Microsoft 365 Copilot demonstrated Microsoft's vision for the future of work. The suite of tools supported by GPT-4 will assist users in generating Office content through natural language prompts. For example, users can request PowerPoint to create a presentation based on a Word document, generate proposals from spreadsheet data, or summarize emails and draft email replies in Outlook, all with simple commands. Therefore, it has been considered a potential revolutionizing force in improving working efficiency.

 

Earlier this year, Microsoft began testing Copilot with a select group of enterprise partners, but the availability for all enterprise customers had not been announced at that time. Now, with the pricing announcement, it is likely that this system will be fully launched in the market soon.

 

Meanwhile, during the event, Microsoft also introduced Bing Chat Enterprise, a privacy-focused version of their AI chatbot with enhanced security for handling sensitive business data. Starting from Tuesday, Bing Chat Enterprise is available for free as a preview version for Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business Premium, and Business Standard customers. However, in the future, Microsoft stated that they would offer a separate subscription with a monthly fee of $5 for this enterprise-centric chatbot service.

 

According to Microsoft's Chief Communications Officer Frank Shaw, the launch of Bing Chat Enterprise aims to provide AI-powered chat functionality for enterprises with a focus on protecting business data, as both input and output data will be safeguarded, thus allowing business customers to “obtain better answers, higher efficiency, and new ways of creativity.”

 

Microsoft plans to release its Q4 earnings on July 25th, 2023. It would be unlikely to see Microsoft will roll out its products like Office 365 Copilot to the market before the earnings date, but it would definitely be interesting to see how its AI-featured products will affect the tech giant’s financial metrics.