Microsoft Corp. is coaching its sales team on how to vigorously compete against Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, playing up shortcomings in products from the artificial intelligence firms.The software giant offers lower costs, better security controls and a more complete suite of products, Microsoft executives said during an internal meeting this week laying out the company’s sales strategy for the fiscal year that began this month.“Everyone else is selling parts — we’re selling the full end-to-end system. That’s the story that we all need to get out there and tell in FY27,” Executive Vice President Jay Parikh said Tuesday, according to a transcript reviewed by Bloomberg.The world’s largest software company is pitching itself as a platform for corporations to fine-tune, deploy and monitor AI in their businesses. Still, it faces steep competition in the market from large startups like OpenAI and rival cloud platforms such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Investors fear the newer AI tools will take the place of established software products, and Microsoft’s stock has dropped 20% this year over these concerns and its rapidly climbing spending on data centers.Many of the speeches from Microsoft executives during the presentations, which began Tuesday and continue Wednesday, referenced the company’s competitive positioning.For example, Executive Vice President Jacob Andreou presented a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft’s flagship AI assistant, Copilot, and Anthropic’s Claude for work in Microsoft’s office products. He said Anthropic’s was slower and less accurate, and lacked the proper security integrations.“We know that everyone here is competing every day with products from OpenAI and Anthropic,” Andreou said during the presentation. His team is hard at work “to make Copilot the application even more competitive,” he said.Microsoft and Anthropic declined to comment. Over the next year, a major topic for customers will be the ability to monitor costs of AI and use cheaper models, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella told the group. Nadella pointed to Unilever Plc, saying the consumer goods giant built an automated claims processing system on Microsoft’s platform that saved it about $300 million. At one point, the system was using one of the most advanced AI models available, but then swapped in a cheaper Microsoft model, he said. Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.Bloomberg reported last week that Microsoft, too, replaced advanced models from OpenAI and Anthropic in favor of its own cheaper alternative in some products.--With assistance from Matt Day.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com©2026 Bloomberg L.P.Published on July 16, 2026