GitHub Copilot reaches 20M users worldwide as adoption suruges over 5M in the last quarter, boosting its role in AI-powered coding productivity.
A GitHub spokesperson informed TechCrunch that this figure pertains to “all-time users.”
In the past three months, five million individuals have attempted to use GitHub Copilot for the first time; the company announced in April that the tool had reached 15 million users.
Microsoft and GitHub do not disclose the number of individuals who have continued to utilize the AI coding tool monthly or daily, even though these figures are likely significantly fewer.
Microsoft also reported that 90% of the Fortune 100 utilize GitHub Copilot, one of today’s most widely used AI coding tools. The company has also noted that the product’s growth among enterprise customers has increased by approximately 75% since the previous quarter.
AI coding tools are becoming increasingly popular among the few AI products that generate substantial revenue. Nadella stated in 2024 that GitHub Copilot was a more significant organization than the entirety of GitHub at the time of Microsoft’s acquisition in 2018.
GitHub Copilot’s growth rate has persisted positively over the past year.
Compared to AI chatbots such as Gemini and ChatGPT, which attract hundreds of millions of users monthly, the world’s most popular AI coding tools have minuscule user bases.
Software engineering is more specialized than AI chatbots’ general informational inquiries.
However, software engineers and their employers appear prepared to pay a premium for AI coding tools.
GitHub Copilot is well-positioned to dominate the market for enterprise AI coding tools, given Microsoft’s extensive list of enterprise customers and the developer ecosystem that GitHub has.
Cursor, an additional prominent AI coding tool, has been recruiting talent from emerging AI startups to compete with GitHub Copilot in the enterprise.
Bloomberg reported that over one million individuals utilized Cursor’s product daily in March. The organization generated approximately $200 million in annualized recurring revenue at that time.
Currently, Cursor’s annualized revenue (ARR) exceeds $500 million, indicating that a significantly greater number of individuals are utilizing its products daily.
Although Cursor and GitHub Copilot were initially designed to address distinct aspects of the developer experience, they are gradually merging into similar products.
Both organizations have recently implemented AI agents to identify bugs introduced by humans and examine code.
Cursor and GitHub are developing AI agents that automate programmer workflows, enabling developers to outsource tasks entirely.
During the earnings call on Wednesday, Nadella stated that GitHub was experiencing significant growth with its AI coding agents.
In addition to Cursor, GitHub has various well-capitalized competitors interested in selling AI coding tools to the enterprise.
Google acquired the leaders of the AI coding startup Windsurf, while Cognition, the manufacturer of Devin, acquired the remaining members of Windsurf’s team.
That is not to mention that OpenAI and Anthropic are developing their own AI coding offerings, which are enabled by in-house AI models, Codex and Claude Code, respectively, to capture the market.
The nascent market is rapidly becoming one of the most competitive in AI.
