July 31 - During the latest earnings call, theMicrosoftCEO Satya Nadella announced that GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, has launched the AI Programming Assistant GitHub CopilotGitHub's "historical cumulative user count" has exceeded 20 million. That means about 5 million people have tried the tool for the first time in the last three months, after GitHub announced 15 million users in April.
1AI notes that despite the rapid growth in users, Microsoft and GitHub have not disclosed how many of them continue to use the service, such as the size of monthly or daily active users. It is widely believed in the industry that the number of such actual active users is likely to be much lower than the cumulative number of users.
Microsoft also says that GitHub Copilot, one of the most popular AI programming tools available, has been adopted by 90% of the Fortune 100 companies.
Nadella has noted in 2024 that GitHub Copilot's business is already larger than the size of Microsoft's overall business when it acquired GitHub in 2018, and that GitHub Copilot's growth has remained strong over the past year.
However, the overall user base of AI programming tools is still small compared to general-purpose AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which often have hundreds of millions of monthly activity. After all, software development is a relatively specialized field with a naturally more focused audience. But that's why developers and their employers are more willing to pay a premium for efficiency-enhancing AI tools.
Relying on Microsoft's vast enterprise customer resources and GitHub's central position in the global developer ecosystem, GitHub Copilot currently holds a significant advantage in the enterprise AI programming market. However, the competition in this track is rapidly heating up.
Another high-profile AI programming tool, Cursor, is trying to challenge its lead. In an effort to build up its strength, Cursor has been actively recruiting talent from emerging AI startups. In March of this year, Cursor surpassed one million daily active users and had annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of about $200 million, according to Bloomberg. To date, its ARR has jumped to more than $500 million, suggesting that its user base and commercialization capabilities are expanding rapidly.
Initially, GitHub Copilot and Cursor each had their own product positioning, but now they're converging. Recently, both companies have introduced AI agents with the ability to review code and find human error, and are working to develop intelligences that automate programmers' workflows, allowing developers to leave repetitive tasks entirely in the hands of AI. Nadella said at the earnings conference that GitHub's AI programming agents are gaining momentum.
In addition to Cursor, GitHub faces stiff competition from tech giants. Google recently absorbed the core team of AI programming startup Windsurf, while Cognition, which developed Devin, a fully autonomous AI programmer, acquired the remaining members of Windsurf. In addition, OpenAI and Anthropic are also actively laying out the field of AI programming based on their self-developed models, Codex and Claude Code, respectively, with the intention of getting a share of the pie.