Microsoft is directing developers on AI coding projects to default to OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model in the GitHub Copilot coding tool, as part of an efficiency push. Jay Parikh, executive vice president of Microsoft’s CoreAI engineering group, wrote in a memo to employees this week that shifting more workloads to OpenAI models helps the company get greater value from its token investment. Parikh’s group includes GitHub, Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Microsoft has built its own AI programming model and gives cloud customers access to over 11,000 models, including from Anthropic, but wants staffers to use intellectual property rights from its early investment in OpenAI. OpenAI released GPT-5.6 Sol in July. The guidance follows an era of “tokenmaxxing,” when developers were encouraged to run up large token bills. Capital expenditures from Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta are expected to top $700 billion collectively this year, and free cash flow dwindled in the latest quarter, going negative for Amazon and Alphabet. Microsoft’s cash generation fell by 23% from a year earlier. Microsoft’s stock rallied 22% last week on earnings, its strongest weekly performance since 1999, and is up about 1% for the year. Parikh wrote that the CoreAI group will adjust defaults as models and products change. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company periodically updates default model settings in internal tools to balance performance and efficient use of resources, while continuing to