Disney ditches GitHub Copilot, adopts OpenAI's Codex

Disney has decided to overhaul its AI coding toolkit under CEO Josh D'Amaro's AI-first strategy. According to an internal message screenshot reviewed by Business Insider, the company announced on Tuesday afternoon that it would discontinue Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, along with two Amazon AI tools—the agentic code editor Kiro and the AI assistant Q—effective August in the US. The changes do not apply internationally, a Disney tech leader confirmed to staff.

In place of GitHub Copilot, Disney is preparing to adopt OpenAI's Codex coding tool, though the company did not provide a timeline for its rollout. Disney will retain access to Anthropic's Claude Enterprise and Cursor, signaling that these two tools have proven more valuable to the company's engineering workforce.

The exodus from GitHub Copilot reveals persistent adoption and satisfaction challenges for Microsoft's coding assistant. Eight Disney tech employees told Business Insider that they rarely or never used it. One product manager complained that GitHub Copilot generated code that was "needlessly complex" and demanded cleanup work. A longtime software engineer explained that their access had "lapsed for lack of use," adding, "Once I got Cursor and Kiro, there was no need to use it." These anecdotes underscore a broader pattern: GitHub Copilot is "lagging behind" rivals like ChatGPT and Claude in adoption, per previous reporting.

Claude and Cursor have become standout favorites within Disney's engineering organization. Some superusers invoke those AI tools tens of thousands of times per day, Business Insider previously reported. One high-level software engineer stated that their AI tool usage was "probably around 80% Claude at the terminal when coding." Disney's streaming leaders created an AI adoption dashboard to track usage patterns and encouraged tech employees to leverage it to work faster. A high-level AI staffer summed up the company's priority: "The No. 1 thing is to increase velocity," or the speed of output. Microsoft's recent pricing transition—moving GitHub Copilot to token-based billing in place of the request-based subscription model—added friction. The company said the old model was "no longer sustainable" as it announced the shift. Nonetheless, a Microsoft executive reported in June that the change drove the "best month ever" for the GitHub developer platform, though this has not arrested the broader erosion in user confidence at major accounts like Disney.

GitHub Copilot has faced mounting pressure in the enterprise market despite being part of Microsoft's broader AI product suite. The tool already "lags behind" rivals like ChatGPT and Claude in adoption, and Disney's decision to drop it underscores a pattern: major tech companies are consolidating around a narrower set of AI coding assistants. At Disney, Anthropic's Claude has become the standout favorite—one high-level engineer reported using it for roughly 80% of terminal-based coding work. Cursor, an AI-powered code editor, has also gained traction after it made users question why they needed Copilot at all.

Microsoft's pricing pivot last month—shifting GitHub Copilot to token-based billing instead of a subscription model—may have accelerated the friction. The company acknowledged the old model was "no longer sustainable," but the change coincided with employee feedback that the tool's output quality did not justify the cost. Even so, Microsoft reported that the shift drove the "best month ever" for its GitHub developer platform, suggesting the pricing change may have other effects on retention and usage.

Disney's adoption dashboard and emphasis on speed—what staff called "velocity" to increase output—shows that enterprise AI adoption is now measured and competitive. The choice to adopt OpenAI's Codex (though with no stated timeline) indicates that OpenAI is positioning itself as a credible alternative for companies seeking to replace or supplement existing tools. For Microsoft, the loss of a major customer is particularly stinging given its own efforts to revamp GitHub and reorganize its Copilot teams to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic.

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