Microsoft folds four Copilot tools into one app.

Microsoft chief executive Satya NadellaChairman and chief executive of Microsoft, in post since February 2014. He has been with the company since 1992 and ran its cloud business before that. Under him Microsoft moved its centre of gravity from Windows to the cloud. confirmed the rebuild on 29 July.

On the quarterly earnings call he said: "Copilot is evolving rapidly from chat to Cowork to Autopilots. This quarter, we are bringing these Copilot experiences together, including code, in one super app." Four things are being merged: Copilot Chat, the coding assistant GitHub Copilot, Copilot CoworkThe part of Copilot that carries out a task instead of answering a question about it. It works across several programmes and hands back a finished result. and the agenticAn agentic system is given a goal rather than an instruction. It draws up its own plan, works through it step by step and only checks back at points set in advance. system Autopilot. For consumers and for businesses at the same time, within this quarter, so by the end of September.

Copilot is not a side project. The same report puts Microsoft at more than 30 million paid Copilot seats, with GitHub Copilot on 50 million users.

The announcement sounds like the future, yet part of it has been running for a while. That part I have looked at.

Cowork carries out the task itself

Copilot Cowork has been generally available since 16 June 2026. Microsoft describes it as a system that runs "complex, long-running tasks across multiple tools" and hands back "a completed outcome" rather than a draft.

How it goes: You set a goal, the system turns it into a plan, works through it in the background and checks back at points set in advance before it carries on.

Nine extensions are available, another eight are announced.

Microsoft bills by consumption

The terms decide whether it is worth starting. Cowork runs on Copilot Credits and is billed by consumption: By model use, context retrieval, tool calls and running time.

One creditThe unit Cowork is billed in. One credit costs one US cent on the flexible rate. How many credits a task uses depends on the model, on how much data is pulled in and on how long it runs. costs one US cent on the flexible rate. Larger volumes get a discount. Spending limits can be set at several levels.

I take that to be the actual news for a small firm: You do not need an annual licence for every employee to try Cowork out, you pay for what actually runs. Where it stops is something you set beforehand.

Cowork pays off on the groundwork

Cowork plays to its strength where work takes long and nobody enjoys it: Research across several sources, putting documents together from material you already have, sorting appointments. All of that has to be done before the real work starts.

The second case is work that runs across several programmes. A chat window gives you a good answer, which you then copy into Excel yourself, write into an email and enter in the calendar. Cowork puts the result straight there.

The third case is trying it out at all. Billing by consumption turns a matter of principle into an experiment: Run it for two weeks, set a fixed limit, then read off the invoice whether anything changed. I would start with the groundwork and not with what reaches the client.

Four points are missing from the announcement

Cowork is switched off by default, an administrator has to release it first. Anyone who looks for it and cannot find it therefore has no problem with the tool, only with the settings.

On top of that every user needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Billing by consumption comes on top of it and does not replace the licence.

The cost is not fixed in advance, because billing follows consumption and a long piece of research across many sources costs more than a tidied calendar. How much more, Microsoft does not say anywhere. I would not let a team start before a spending limit is in place.

On 30 July the super app was announced, not shipped. What it will cost and whether it replaces or adds to today's Copilot Chat inside the plans, Nadella left open.

I expect the terms to move again before then. Anyone starting today should start small.