# Anthropic’s AI services are too expensive, says Microsoft AI head > Source: > Published: 2026-06-05 16:13:05+00:00 Projection, much? Microsoft’s head of AI has accused a rival’s AI service of being too pricey, just as the introduction of [usage-based pricing for GitHub Copilot](https://www.infoworld.com/article/4164236/github-shifts-copilot-to-usage-based-billing-signaling-new-cost-model-for-enterprise-ai-tools.html) begins to hit developers using its own services. “Anthropic is extremely expensive and I think many people are urgently looking for alternatives,” Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, [told Bloomberg News](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-06-04/microsoft-says-anthropic-models-are-too-expensive). The spotlight is on the cost of AI services at the moment, with [so many different parts of the business using the technology](https://www.infoworld.com/article/4181397/the-real-cost-of-agentic-ai.html) while at the same time [many businesses are finding it hard to report any meaningful ROI](https://www.computerworld.com/article/4142408/ai-budgets-soar-roi-still-elusive.html). This week, Microsoft at its annual Build conference looked to fight back against this [when it announced seven new AI models](https://microsoft.ai/news/building-a-hillclimbing-machine-launching-seven-new-mai-models/), emphasizing the lower cost. The company hopes that cheaper AI models will mean more enterprises find that AI projects are viable. In 2025, [Gartner reported](https://www.computerworld.com/article/4016206/nearly-half-of-agentic-ai-projects-will-be-killed-by-27-due-to-hype-costs-and-risks.html) that many such endeavors would be cancelled by 2027: cheaper implementations could be the way forward. Microsoft clearly sees its own AI developer tools as a better deal than those of Anthropic: Last month it was reported that Microsoft would cancel most of its Claude Code licenses at the end of the half-year period in June, moving engineers to its own CoPilot tool. *This article first appeared on CIO.*