Okta 2026: Anthropic is the fastest-growing enterprise AI provider, Microsoft 365 remains the most deployed

Context

Okta publishes its Business at Work 2026 - the annual study that tracks software adoption by the identities that the platform manages across its thousands of enterprise customers and thousands of integrated applications. The report is covered by ITmedia AI+ in an article dated July 24, 2026, which highlights two key findings on the AI front: Microsoft 365 Copilot remains, in terms of the number of organizations using it, the most deployed enterprise AI; Anthropic (Claude) shows the strongest year-over-year growth among the providers tracked, ahead of OpenAI and Google.

The Data

The central message of the report, as reported by ITmedia, is twofold:

• Distribution - Microsoft 365 Copilot is deployed in the largest number of organizations. It is the installed base, driven by the existing Office / Teams ecosystem.
• Product traction - Anthropic is the provider with the fastest year-over-year adoption growth. A figure that, without an equivalent historical bundle, falls almost entirely on perceived quality and technical word-of-mouth.

The Okta report does not publicly segment by company size; the raw YoY figures by actor are in the original document.

Analysis

Three readings overlap. (1) The distribution channel still dominates: Microsoft converts its Office / Teams ecosystem effortlessly, which explains the installed base. (2) Product quality takes over growth: Anthropic has no historical IT bundle, nor pre-existing large enterprise relationship - its progress signals that decision-makers are buying for the perceived quality of Claude, not for the integration. (3) Google Gemini remains underrepresented compared to the Workspace base: a weak signal of IT disinterest in Google's enterprise AI layer.

Probabilized Scenarios

• Base case (55%): Microsoft keeps the base through bundling, Anthropic takes the "preferred provider for technical teams" layer over 18 months - two parallel markets that coexist.
• Bull case Anthropic (25%): the Meta deal (fil meta-anthropic-deal, discussions up to $10B reported) and pricing traction translate into significantly broader penetration growth in 12 months - Claude becomes the default AI outside the bundle.
• Bear case Anthropic (20%): Microsoft releases the Copilot bundle on Claude via an Azure integration, which flattens the competitive trajectory by absorbing the Anthropic call in the Microsoft channel.

Implications for the Investor / Decision-Maker

For a CIO: the distribution-vs-quality duopoly justifies two contracts, not one. For the investor: Anthropic's growth outside the bundle validates the current valuation thesis and makes the IPO trajectory more readable; the relative weakness of Gemini in the enterprise is a signal to be integrated into the Alphabet thesis. For a B2B SaaS founder, the data says one simple thing: integrating Claude first no longer costs the pain of a distribution compromise.

Risks

The Okta data captures SSO / identity management integrations, not shadow IT usage - actual adoption may be broader and less concentrated. Anthropic's YoY growth starts from a lower base than Microsoft's, so it should be relativized over time.

To Watch

Usage reports from Cursor, Cognition, and Sourcegraph on the distribution of models on the development side - it's an advanced proxy for what Okta will make visible in six months.