GitHub Copilot, the AI-powered coding assistant developed by GitHub under Microsoft’s ownership, has now been used by over 20 million people, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. This figure includes all-time users, reflecting the total number of people who have tried the tool since its launch.
Notably, the platform has seen a rapid increase in user growth — with around 5 million new users trying Copilot in just the past three months. While Microsoft has not shared monthly or daily active user figures, the overall adoption indicates continued interest in AI-assisted software development.
Copilot’s footprint among major corporations is also growing. Microsoft reported that 90% of Fortune 100 companies now use the tool. Enterprise adoption has jumped by approximately 75% compared to the previous quarter, signaling rising demand in professional development environments.
AI coding assistants have emerged as one of the most commercially successful categories within generative AI. In 2024, Microsoft revealed that Copilot alone had grown into a larger business than GitHub itself was when it was first acquired in 2018. The tool’s growth trajectory has only accelerated since then.
While Copilot’s user base still lags behind general-purpose AI platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini — which attract hundreds of millions of users monthly — the niche nature of software development means a smaller, more specialized audience is to be expected. Despite this, developers and their companies appear willing to invest in premium AI tools that improve productivity.
In the competitive landscape, Copilot faces growing pressure from alternatives such as Cursor. Cursor has been aggressively expanding its team by hiring talent from emerging AI startups and reported a daily user base of over a million earlier this year. Its annualized recurring revenue has more than doubled, now exceeding $500 million — a sign of its increasing presence in the enterprise space.
Both GitHub Copilot and Cursor are evolving beyond simple code completion. Each has launched AI agents designed to review code, detect bugs, and eventually automate entire developer workflows. According to Microsoft, GitHub is experiencing strong momentum with these intelligent programming assistants.
The competition doesn’t stop there. Several well-funded companies, including Google, Cognition (developer of Devin), OpenAI, and Anthropic, are all building out their own enterprise AI coding tools, powered by proprietary models like Codex and Claude Code.
As the AI development ecosystem matures, the race to dominate the enterprise coding assistant market is quickly becoming one of the most dynamic and closely watched segments in the AI industry.
