Microsoft Merges Consumer and Enterprise Copilot Into a Single App — Here's Everything You Need to Know

Rollout Timeline

The unified app is rolling out on a staggered schedule:

The app keeps the "Microsoft Copilot" name but ships with an updated icon and a refreshed interface .

Features Being Cut (Effective August 18, 2026)

Five consumer-facing features are being retired simultaneously with the merger. All are shut down on August 18, 2026 :

• Group Chats — Multi-user chat conversations in the consumer Copilot app are being removed entirely .
• AI-Generated Podcasts (Copilot Podcasts) — The feature that turned documents, meetings, and web topics into listenable audio shows is being retired with no export option — any previously created podcasts will become inaccessible after the cutoff date .
• Deep Research (Consumer) — The in-depth multi-source research report feature for consumers is being retired. Microsoft warns users will see changes to how in-depth research is handled after August 18 .
• Copilot Labs — The experimental features sandbox within Copilot is being shut down .
• Mico Character — The animated, expressive blob character that accompanied Copilot's voice mode (introduced less than a year earlier) is being removed, though Microsoft says it may still appear in some Copilot "moments" .

Existing Deep Research reports will not be deleted — users can still access them through chat history or, for Premium subscribers, through the new Researcher tool .

The Replacement: Researcher Tool

Microsoft's recommended replacement for the retired consumer Deep Research is a new tool called Researcher. It is locked behind a paid subscription :

• Who gets it: Researcher is available only to Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers (consumer) and Microsoft 365 business/enterprise users with the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on license ($30/user/month for Enterprise, ~$21/user/month for Business with up to 300 users) .
• What it does: Researcher generates detailed reports and analyses with full citations, comparable to the old Deep Research but with tighter integration into the M365 ecosystem .
• Usage Limits: Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license are limited to 25 combined queries per calendar month across Researcher and the Analyst agent. The limit resets on the 1st of each month . Free Copilot users will have no access to in-depth research capabilities after August 18 .

User Metrics & Competitive Context

The consolidation is driven by a stark gap between Copilot's consumer traction and the broader market, alongside strong but narrow enterprise growth:

• 38.5 million monthly active consumer users: Copilot's consumer base sits at roughly 38.5 million monthly active users — a figure dwarfed by ChatGPT's 1 billion+ monthly active users .
• 30 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats: Microsoft reported in its FY26 Q4 earnings (July 29, 2026) that paid M365 Copilot seats surpassed 30 million, with net seat additions more than doubling quarter-over-quarter . This represents roughly 6.6–7% penetration of the broader ~450–464 million commercial M365 paid seat base .
• The strategic problem: The consumer app had a feature-rich but low-engagement problem, while the enterprise app had strong paid adoption but room to grow daily active usage. The merger aims to cross-pollinate usage and reduce the fragmentation that confused users and diluted the Copilot brand .

Leadership and Internal Mandate

The reorganization traces back to March 2026, when Microsoft combined its previously separate commercial and consumer Copilot teams into a single organization. Jacob Andreou was placed in charge of the unified Copilot product experience, while Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman was reassigned toward longer-term frontier AI work .

Andreou's internal mandate, delivered to the ~11,000-person Copilot team, was blunt: the product must "earn the right to exist" . This directive drove the feature cuts, the consolidation of engineering into a single codebase (codenamed Copilot Fusion), and the shift of advanced capabilities behind paywalls .

Expected User Experience with the Unified App

The unified Microsoft Copilot app introduces several practical changes for users:

• Multi-account sign-in: Users can now sign in with both personal (Microsoft Account) and work/school (Entra ID/Azure AD) accounts within the same app instance, with easy switching .
• Data separation: Microsoft has built tenant-aware data boundaries — work data stays within the enterprise compliance boundary, personal data stays separate. The app uses Microsoft Entra Agent ID for governance of autonomous agent actions and audit trails .
• Free core chat with usage limits: The free tier remains available for basic chat, but comes with usage limits (message caps, slower AI model access). Once the free monthly quota is exhausted, users are prompted to upgrade to a paid plan. The free experience is described by some observers as increasingly turning into a "demo" that funnels users toward paid subscriptions .