Microsoft staff are burning a median $300 a month on AI, according to their own spreadsheet

An internal spreadsheet where Microsoft employees swap pay details now carries a column for monthly AI spend, with a median of about $300 over 28 days across roughly 350 entries. Business Insider found no meaningful link between heavy AI use and bonuses, raises or promotions.

Microsoft employees have started comparing their AI bills the way they compare their salaries. An internal spreadsheet where staff voluntarily post raises, bonuses and stock awards now carries a column for how much AI they burned through last month.

The document is one TNW has already mined. We used its pay columns this week to show Microsoft has split into two populations on compensation, and the AI column is a separate question.

The number is larger than most people would guess. Across roughly 350 entries the median was about $300 over 28 days, and the highest single figure was $28,000.

It varies enormously by team. CoreAI reported a median of $975, Security $526 and Microsoft AI $490, while the customer and partner organisation came in lowest at $134 and also produced that $28,000 outlier.

For scale, a Microsoft 365 Copilot seat costs $30 a month. Accenture gave one to 743,000 people this spring, and the median Microsoft employee is spending ten times that on themselves.

The finding that matters is an absence. Business Insider reports no meaningful correlation between how much AI someone used and their bonus rating, merit increase or chance of promotion.

The data deserves its caveats. It is self-reported, voluntary and anonymous, covers around 350 people out of 223,000, and Microsoft says the tracking tool is still in early testing.

It also lands in a familiar pattern. TNW has reported that the hours AI saves workers are mostly thrown away rather than banked or redirected.

A tool that itemises this per employee is not a neutral thing to install in Europe. In Germany the works council has a co-determination right over technical devices capable of monitoring behaviour or performance.

The threshold is lower than it sounds. The Federal Labour Court has held since 1975 that a system only has to be suitable for monitoring, not designed for it, which is why even spreadsheets and calendars have triggered the rule.

The appetite for measuring people at work is not in doubt. Skan AI raised $63M to observe how office staff actually do their jobs and build agents that copy them.

So one spreadsheet says two things. Working on AI at Microsoft pays better, and using a lot of it does not, which are not the same proposition at all.