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. Part of it is already running. That part I have looked at.

Cowork finishes a task instead of answering it

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 and works through it in the background.

At points set in advance it checks back before it carries on.

Nine extensions are available, another eight are announced.

Billing runs per task, not per seat

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.

For a small firm that is the actual news.

You do not need an annual licence for every employee to try it. You pay for what actually runs. Where it stops is something you set beforehand.

Where the opportunity sits

With tasks that take long and that nobody enjoys. Research across several sources. Putting documents together from material you already have. Sorting appointments. That is the work which has to be done before the real work starts.

With work that runs across several programmes. The difference to a chat window is not the quality of the answer. At the end the result sits in Excel, the email is written, the meeting is booked.

With trying it out without a contract. Billing by consumption turns a matter of principle into an experiment. Two weeks, a fixed limit, and afterwards the invoice tells you whether it was worth anything.

What to know before you start

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

A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence is required. Billing by consumption comes on top of it. It does not replace the licence.

Consumption billing means the cost is not fixed in advance. A long piece of research across many sources costs more than a tidied calendar. How much more, Microsoft does not say. So a limit belongs in place before anyone starts.

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.