Microsoft’s Jacob Andreou is killing off low-value Copilot features, and the AI market should take notes

Microsoft’s AI assistant has been everywhere. In your Word docs, your Notepad, your Photos app, your email, your browser. Turns out “everywhere” isn’t the same thing as “useful.”

Jacob Andreou, the newly installed Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Copilot division, is now systematically stripping out Copilot integrations from lower-performing Windows applications. Notepad and Photos are among the apps losing their AI sidekick.

The adoption problem Microsoft can’t ignore

Here’s the number that explains everything Andreou is doing: 4.5%. That’s the share of Microsoft’s 450 million Microsoft 365 customers who are actually paying for Copilot features.

Andreou, who took the helm on March 17, 2026, appears to understand this. Rather than continuing to bolt AI onto every application regardless of whether users want it there, he’s advocating for a focused approach: concentrate engineering resources on the integrations that actually deliver value, and kill the ones that don’t.

Who is Jacob Andreou and why does this matter

Andreou isn’t a typical Microsoft lifer. He spent years as Senior Vice President of Product at Snap, the company behind Snapchat, before a brief stint as a venture partner at Greylock. His appointment to run Copilot, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella and working alongside Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, signals that Microsoft wanted a consumer product brain, not just another enterprise software executive.

His mandate is to unify the consumer and commercial Copilot experiences under a single vision covering design, product development, growth, and engineering.

The pivot to high-impact features

Under Andreou’s leadership, Microsoft is doubling down on two specific capabilities: Copilot Tasks and Copilot Cowork. Copilot Tasks focuses on automating multi-step workflows. Copilot Cowork introduces collaborative AI assistance that works alongside teams rather than just individual users.

Copilot Cowork now includes consumption-based billing options, a model that was reportedly developed within just two months of Andreou’s arrival. That’s a meaningful departure from Microsoft’s traditional per-seat licensing approach and suggests the company is experimenting with ways to lower the barrier to entry for organizations that are curious about AI but unwilling to commit to a flat monthly fee for every employee.

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