Barclays rolls out Microsoft Copilot to 100,000 workers as AI adoption gathers tempo

Barclays has signed an settlement with public cloud big Microsoft that can see the latter’s generative synthetic intelligence (GenAI) instrument Copilot rolled out to 100,000 of the financial institution’s workers globally.

The banking big plans to combine Microsoft 365 Copilot into its in-house worker productiveness instrument to create a single AI agent that can present employees with one-stop-shop entry to its broad ecosystem of digital companies.

These embody collaboration instruments, worker portals and on-line assets that its employees must do their jobs, with Barclays claiming the transfer will enhance productiveness.

In a weblog submit, Microsoft stated the settlement will see it present Barclays workers with entry to a number of of its AI choices. These embody its Copilot-powered Colleague AI Agent instrument, designed to assist employees ebook enterprise journey, examine coverage compliance and discover help with HR-related queries.  

There may be additionally a personalised, semantic Content material Search instrument to assist employees floor location-based data with context primarily based on their consumer profiles, and one other referred to as Colleague Entrance Door. The latter is billed as an agentic dashboard that’s accessed by way of the worker expertise platform, Microsoft Viva, that Barclays employees will use to ebook annual depart, and can serve them up with personalised information and bulletins from across the firm.

Craig Vivid, group CIO and deputy group co-chief working officer at Barclays, stated the corporate and its employees are already well-versed in utilizing AI instruments, however it’s searching for out further positive aspects and enhancements by increasing its use of the know-how to incorporate generative AI.

“At Barclays, we’ve been leveraging the facility of AI, and now GenAI, to drive deeper insights, enhance effectivity and create a extra intuitive expertise throughout the organisation,” he stated.

Certainly, a report – lined by Laptop Weekly in April 2025 – by benchmarking agency Evident confirmed Barclays as being the tenth greatest hirer of AI expertise throughout the banking sector.

Vivid continued: “Our roll-out of Copilot, built-in with our colleague productiveness instrument, is a major step ahead in simplifying the way in which we work, making it simpler to get issues performed.”  

Information of the deal between Microsoft and Barclays emerged final week, in a report by information website Bloomberg, the place particulars of the 100,000-seat deployment had been stated to have been flagged by Microsoft chief industrial officer Judson Althoff throughout an organization city corridor assembly.

The report claimed that Barclays was one among a number of family names, touted by Microsoft, that had signed as much as similar-sized Copilot-related offers, together with the likes of Volkswagen, Siemens and Toyota.

Previous to this, Barclays had launched into a trial roll-out of Microsoft 365 Copilot involving 15,000 of its workers.

The deal marks a deepening of the know-how partnership between the 2 firms, with the pair beforehand asserting that Barclays had named Microsoft Groups as its most popular collaboration platform.

Microsoft UK CEO Darren Hardman stated the corporate has all the time marked itself out as being an “innovator” throughout the banking sector by “embracing new know-how waves” to serve its prospects and colleagues higher.

He continued: “The adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot to be the UI [user interface] for Barclays AI will assist it to ship on its daring imaginative and prescient of placing AI within the palms of each worker, and we sit up for working carefully with Barclays to assist its colleagues maximise the advantages from utilizing this transformational know-how.”