Over a million developers now pay for GitHub Copilot

Microsoft is observing an exponential growth in the number of users for the paid version of its coding assistant, GitHub Copilot.

Over one million users have subscribed to the service, and more than 37,000 organizations are using it worldwide.

This massive adoption is evidence, if any were needed, of this technology’s effectiveness for developers. Since the beginning of September, there has been a 40% increase in paid accounts for Copilot, as noted by Microsoft.

This growth, according to its CEO Satya Nadella, now extends far beyond the American borders.

The recent introduction of Copilot Chat has attracted a wide range of companies. Innovative startups like Shopify, as well as major corporations like PWC, rely on this chatbot to enhance their developer teams’ efficiency.

AI at Microsoft: more than just Copilot

GitHub Copilot, which is based on OpenAI’s Codex and GPT-4 models, is just one of the many facets of AI deployment within the tech giant’s products and services.

Its search engine, Bing, which now integrates ChatGPT, is approaching 2 billion conversations initiated by its users.

The Redmond company has also committed to deploying AI throughout its entire Office suite, with Microsoft 365 Copilot. This includes the group’s flagship solutions such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook.

Financial analysts, on the other hand, have their eyes set on Microsoft’s potentially lucrative partnership with OpenAI. With a staggering investment of ten billion dollars, some already see this collaboration as an opportunity that could lead to a valuation of one hundred billion dollars (you read that right) for Microsoft in the years to come.

In response to recent speculations about Copilot’s profitability, Amy Hood, Microsoft’s CFO, underscores the positive impact of AI on the company’s revenues. Without giving specific figures on GitHub Copilot, she indicates that this higher AI consumption contributes to the growth of the Azure cloud computing platform’s revenues.

For his part, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke shared this milestone for Copilot on X (formerly Twitter). He adds that Copilot has become (without much difficulty, let’s admit it) the most adopted AI tool for developers in history.

GitHub Copilot has crossed the chasm.

We are thrilled to share that Copilot now has over 1 million paid subscribers in over 37,000 organizations, making it the most widely adopted AI developer tool in history. And we're not even close to done 👀https://t.co/zjyT6hMrWh

— Thomas Dohmke (@ashtom) October 25, 2023

GitHub will be holding its annual GitHub Universe conference on November 8 and 9, and it’s a safe bet that announcements will be made regarding its coding assistant.

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