For two years, the simplest question about AI at work has been how many people pay for it. This week the biggest vendors answered it differently. Microsoft gave no Copilot seat update, Google said it has sold more than 100 million, and ServiceNow talked about contract value. Meanwhile, agents are leaving their home apps for ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, a shift Kevin Kieller of enableUC expects to make every vendor's app matter less.
In this week's roundup I look at my interview with Kieller, Microsoft's missing Copilot number, ServiceNow's push into other vendors' assistants and an emergency security fix from Neat, plus my take on Teams external chat. I've also picked out news from Bending Spoons, RingCentral, Cisco and Shure, and Logitech.
Microsoft Skips Its Copilot Seat Count as AI Billing Shifts to Usage
Microsoft's fiscal first-quarter results on October 28 left out paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, the industry's barometer for workplace AI. Revenue rose 19% to $92.3 billion, but as our analysis of the quarter found, the seat count, last reported at more than 30 million, was missing from both the release and the call. Asked about it, CFO Amy Hood was direct on the call:
And we did not disclose, to answer your direct question, an update on the Copilot number this quarter. We talked about momentum in revenue and usage.
CEO Satya Nadella said Copilot daily users were "up nearly 50 percent quarter over quarter," though he gave no base, and that the number of Copilot customers "actively consuming credits through usage-based billing grew over 75 percent over the quarter."
Google took the opposite line. On Alphabet's call the same day, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told analysts:
Across all our AI services, we have sold more than 100 million seats for knowledge work.
The two aren't like-for-like, since Kurian's figure spans all of Google's AI services. For buyers, the bigger change is the bill, which is splitting into a seat license IT owns, increasingly the $99 E7 suite, and a variable agent bill business units can run up. From December 1, Microsoft says usage-based billing will be on by default for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses bought through CSP, with a default limit of 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month. If you buy through a partner, decide who owns that meter before it switches on.
Kevin Kieller Expects AI Assistants to Pull Users Out of the App
Kevin Kieller, Co-Founder and Lead UC&C Strategist at enableUC, expects people to spend less time inside any vendor's app as voice and AI assistants take over. He told me at WebexOne 2026 in Austin, where Cisco unveiled a Webex App rebuilt around AI agents:
We might be going into our favourite AI assistant, let's say Claude, using MCP servers. We may be having more of the interaction via voice.
Cisco is already preparing for that, partnering with Anthropic on Claude and adding an MCP integration with OpenAI's dots, as Cisco's Amit Barave explained at the event. For IT leaders, how well a platform exposes its context to other assistants now matters more than its interface.
Kieller's bigger bet is interop, because people and agents alike need context that never sits in one platform:
All of us have meetings on every different platform every week, and we have business data and knowledge in a whole host of platforms.
RoomOS 27 moves Cisco that way, running fully featured Google Meet alongside Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom. And if the work happens in whichever assistant employees prefer, a seat count in one vendor's app tells buyers less and the meter tells them more. Watch the full interview for his take on voice and Cisco's Dialog.
ServiceNow Lifts Its AI Target and Takes Its Agents Into ChatGPT and Gemini
ServiceNow raised its 2026 target for AI annual contract value to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion at the start of the year, in its third-quarter results on October 28. Subscription revenue rose 21% to $3.99 billion.
For UC&C buyers, the bigger story is where its agents will run. The same day, ServiceNow and OpenAI launched a ServiceNow plugin for ChatGPT. A day earlier, ServiceNow connected its workflows to Gemini Enterprise through MCP servers and Agent2Agent connectivity. Its new Control Tower Alliance for AI governance counts Anthropic, Cisco and OpenAI among its founding members.
Dayforce is taking HR the same way. At its Discover conference on October 27, it unveiled an Agentic HCM Platform and said:
With plugins and connectors, Dayforce actions and data work seamlessly with external AI assistants and business systems including new and expanded partnerships with Microsoft and Anthropic's Claude.
Dayforce in Claude is in beta, with general availability planned for 2027. Collaboration teams will now have to decide which connectors are switched on and whose permissions an agent acts with.
Neat Rolls Out an Emergency Fix for Compromised Certificates
Neat issued an emergency security hotfix, Neat OS 26.5.4, after the private keys of eight intermediate certificates operated by eMudhra under its emSign brand were found to be compromised. Every Neat device running Neat OS is affected. Neat rates the severity High, says it has no evidence of exploitation and says the keys can't be used to push malicious firmware. Neat says the staged rollout begins October 26, with fixes for Neat Pulse and Neat Open due within two weeks.
