Satya Nadella's new headache: Disney dumps GitHub Copilot

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has a fresh challenge on his hands: Disney is dropping GitHub Copilot and several other AI coding tools in the US starting Augurs, according to an internal message viewed by Business Insider. This move of the company does not apply internationally, but it marks a significant setback for Microsoft’s AI product suite. Disney is now preparing to adopt OpenAI’s Codex as its coding assistant, while retaining access to Anthropic’s Claude Enterprise and Cursor. At the same time, Disney revealed that it will drop two Amazon tools which include the agentic code editor Kiro and AI assistant Q. Claude will also no longer be accessible through Amazon Web Services Bedrock.Copilot’s StrugglesEight Disney tech employees told Business Insider they rarely or never used GitHub Copilot. One product manager said Copilot produced “needlessly complex” code requiring clean-up, while a longtime engineer said their access had “lapsed for lack of use.” The frustration was compounded last month when Microsoft shifted Copilot’s pricing to a token-based model, sparking backlash even as executives claimed it fuelled GitHub’s “best month ever.”Disney’s AI favouritesClaude and Cursor have become fan favourites among Disney engineers. Some superusers reportedly invoke these tools tens of thousands of times per day, with one high-level engineer estimating that 80% of their coding at the terminal is done with Claude. Disney’s streaming leaders even created an AI adoption dashboard to track usage, encouraging staff to boost velocity and output.Microsoft’s revamp effortsMicrosoft has been working to revamp GitHub and shake up its Copilot teams to better compete with rivals OpenAI and Anthropic. But Disney’s decision underscores the uphill battle Nadella faces as Copilot struggles to gain traction in a market increasingly dominated by more popular AI coding assistants.Why Microsoft is asking Google and Amazon for 'help' despite spending $190 billion on AIMicrosoft is spending a record $190 billion to build AI infrastructure, and it is still short enough on servers that it has started evaluating Amazon and Google—its two biggest cloud rivals—as suppliers.According to a Business Insider report, the company is now evaluating Amazon and Google as sources of additional cloud capacity, with one person familiar with the discussions putting it plainly: "We are shopping for capacity everywhere." Amazon has already stepped in once, bailing Microsoft out following a series of GitHub outages this year. Microsoft also explored leasing infrastructure from Oracle but walked away over security and compliance concerns. For a company whose Azure pitch rests on owning the stack end to end, that is an uncomfortable place to be.