Microsoft’s new Copilot means fresh opportunities for partners

On September 25, Microsoft announced a relaunched Copilot – dubbed "the new Copilot" – which brings Chat, Cowork, Code and Scout together in one unified application under three tabs:

• Home
• Autopilot
• Code

This is a Copilot updated in two halves. One half changes what Copilot can do. The other will change how customers pay for it.

This article looks at the whole and how it can translate into business growth for Microsoft partners.

A shifting business model

The big picture here is that the business model driving Copilot is evolving from being almost exclusively seat and license-based to a combination of seats and consumption (usage-based billing.)

This is an evolution we covered this in a previous article and in essence it means that the fundamental Copilot features (Chat) are covered by the user license, while the more advanced features (Cowork, Code and Autopilot) will be covered by Copilot Credits, which is a consumption product.

Here's more detail to help you update your customers on what the Microsoft Copilot announcement covers:

Chat, Cowork, autonomous Autopilot

The new Copilot makes it easy for customers to decide which mode of Copilot to use. If users want to bounce around ideas or get help with a task, Chat is the mode to use. If they want to delegate work, they switch to Cowork mode, hand the task over and get a notification when Cowork needs their input. Finally, when the user is ready to go all-in with an AI sidekick, Autopilot is there as the always-on companion that learns, adapts and can act on their behalf like a human personal assistant, but with infinite scale.

Copilot Home

Home is where most people will spend their day. It puts Chat and Cowork in one place, so users don't have to decide up front whether they're asking a question or handing off a job. A quick question can turn into a delegated task as it grows. Cowork handles the multistep work: preparing a month-end close pack, pulling together a product launch kit, or turning a long email thread into a project plan with owners and dates. It works through the steps and checks in when it needs a decision.

Office inside Copilot

As part of the Microsoft Copilot 2026 update, the new Copilot has built-in capabilities to preview and work on Office documents (Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be supported) directly inside the application – no more switching between Copilot and Word to edit a document. In the new Microsoft Copilot, the user collaborates with the agent and they work on the document together.

Copilot Code

By bringing Code to the Copilot application, Microsoft is enabling everyone to be a builder. Business users who haven't previously had access to development tools now have a great way of building, automating and publishing their work. The Microsoft Copilot update and Copilot Managed Runtime introduce capabilities to deploy, run and govern user-created artifacts in an enterprise context. Code is built on the same technology as GitHub Copilot. Users describe what they want in plain language, and Code builds it. A sales manager could ask for a dashboard that tracks pipeline by region. A finance analyst could automate a weekly report that used to eat up a morning.

What makes this especially workable for IT is where those apps live: inside the organization's Microsoft 365 boundary, with access controlled through Microsoft Entra identity and policies deciding which connectors and data each app can use. Code doesn't replace Power Apps or Power Automate. It's aimed at people who'd never open either.

A “new normal” billing model

Per seat licensing will be familiar to everybody but many customers may still be getting used to consumption based billing and buying credits for their usage. This is what the future looks so you might find it’s worthwhile  spelling out exactly how that works in the new Copilot.

Copilot Credits cover the more advanced, agent-driven work. Microsoft describes them as "a common currency for eligible Microsoft services with usage-based billing." Services billed this way include Cowork, Code and Autopilot, along with Copilot Managed Runtime, Work IQ APIs and advanced work in SharePoint and OneDrive  Customers can buy credits through pay-as-you-go, a Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan (P3), prepaid capacity packs or a combination. How many credits a task uses depends on its complexity and the model doing the work, so costs will vary from task to task. Admins control access through spending policies in the Microsoft 365 admin center. For current rates, see Microsoft's Copilot Credits Guide.

From December 1, 2026, new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses bought through CSP will come with usage-based billing switched on by default. (Microsoft originally planned this for November 2.) Pay-as-you-go will be the default billing configuration to help customers access eligible usage-based experiences, including Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs, and GitHub Copilot Harness, with less billing setup, while also providing flexibility to expand usage over time based on business needs. Today, enabling it takes several setup steps. After the change, the Azure subscription setup is included with the license. Each user gets a default spending limit of 4,000 Copilot Credits a month, which admins can adjust.

The change won't initially apply in some markets, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Partner Center sandbox environments open on November 2, so partners can test ahead of the switch too.

Read the Partner Center announcement for the full version on the new billing structure.