Microsoft is moving its Copilot Cowork product to usage-based pricing, per Axios, shifting from monthly plans to charging businesses per use. The company is also exploring a fine-tuned version of DeepSeek V4 or another open-source model as a low-cost alternative, publicly admitting plans to use DeepSeek, which is known for its cost-effectiveness. This shift comes as Microsoft aims to push enterprise AI to more customers, while OpenAI and Anthropic, which power Cowork, face high inference bills. Copilot, Cowork, and agentic tools consume an insane amount of tokens, and with DeepSeek and other open-source models, there are no licensing fees, allowing Microsoft to host the model directly on Azure and pay only for running its own chips. This could push OpenAI and Anthropic out of basic corporate tasks, decreasing their potential cloud capital to premium, heavy-duty "Frontier" cognitive engines.