Microsoft's most expensive enterprise software package yet arrives May 1 at $99 per user monthly, bundling AI tools that would cost $117 separately. The Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Worker Suite represents a 65% premium over the existing E5 tier, which currently costs $60 per user but will see price increases later this year.
Customers purchasing the components individually would pay $60 for E5, $30 for Copilot AI assistant, $12 for Entra identity management tools, and $15 for the new Agent 365 control plane.
"The majority of our base is E5 now, right?"
Microsoft commercial business CEO Judson Althoff said the new subscription tier could drive more organizations to upgrade employees from lower-tier plans to the E5 level.
"And then we're going through healthy renewal cycles on E5 right now."
Central to Microsoft's announcement is Copilot Cowork, a feature built in close collaboration with Anthropic that allows AI models to use other software tools. The integration brings Anthropic's Claude model across the full Copilot Chat experience, not just in Microsoft's Researcher and Excel features where it was previously offered.
Copilot Cowork will handle tasks with multiple steps, such as sending regularly scheduled emails to colleagues and preparing for meetings with documents and internal calls. The feature is currently being piloted with select customers and will become available as a research preview this month through Microsoft's Frontier program.
Microsoft has sunk more than $100 billion in the past year into data center infrastructure, including Nvidia chips that can power AI models. The company now reports roughly 15 million paid Copilot licenses, marking a 160% increase from the prior year with daily active usage up tenfold.
Despite this growth, Microsoft's shares have fallen more than 14% since Anthropic debuted its Claude Cowork product in mid-January. The company hopes its new premium bundle will assuage investors concerned that AI agents might reduce companies' need to rely on traditional software-as-a-service providers.
Agent 365, launching alongside the E7 suite on May 1, serves as a control system for managing AI agents within organizations. Microsoft said that in just two months of preview, tens of millions of agents had appeared in the Agent 365 registry, with internal visibility into more than 500,000 agents across the company focused on research, coding, sales intelligence, customer triage, and HR self-service.
The "First Frontier Suite," as Microsoft calls it internally, arrives as competition intensifies in enterprise AI software from rivals like Salesforce and OpenAI.
