Fitz and Starts: AI & Enterprise Software Weekly - GPT 5.6, TTAN Roofing Win

Research evidence excerpt

Fitz and Starts: AI & Enterprise Software Weekly - GPT 5.6, TTAN Roofing Win

example of model commoditization and ◦Our

workload routing based on price/performance. It is directionally positive for Copilot gross

margins (as well as GM potential for the broader app space that continues to embed

3P LLM-driven capabilities) and highlights MSFT’s distribution control advantage. We

expect app vendors to adopt increasingly heterogeneous model stacks, reserving frontier

models for high-value reasoning while routing simpler workloads to lower-cost, or even

proprietary models.

• Microsoft Cuts 4,800 Jobs (2.1% of Workforce). Microsoft announced approximately 4,800

job eliminations, equal to 2.1% of its workforce, primarily within Commercial and Xbox. The

company said it had redeployed more than 4,000 employees during the prior year and

was reshaping Commercial to embed engineering experts alongside customers. Microsoft

explicitly stated that the eliminated roles were not being replaced by AI, while acknowledging

that AI is automating tasks and changing work.

Thoughts. This announcement appears more consistent with resource reallocation ◦Our

and an operating model redesign than demand weakness. Embedding engineers directly

with customers reinforces the forward-deployed implementation model increasingly used

(across software) to drive complex enterprise AI deployments. This may help adoption

but also underscores that agentic AI in the enterprise remains services and integration-

intensive despite improving model capabilities. We also believe that it seems like a

material piece of the workforce reduction is within Xbox, a consumer-facing business

that arguable has fewer synergies with the rest of the portfolio (though we do see