Has there been any update to the number of licenses required for Copilot for Microsoft 365?

[KarenJones2667]

Yesterday I raised a ticket with Support asking how I could enable Copilot for Microsoft 365. We have 50 users, and are on the M365 E3 plan.

The agent replied that I needed to purchase the stand-alone Copilot license, which is an add-on, from the marketplace. When I couldn't find the stand-alone Copilot license, I did some digging and found that initially there was a requirement for 300 users, and Copilot would be available for small businesses "soon".  I replied to the agent with the information I had found, but heard nothing further.

Does anyone know what "soon" means?  

[#2]

Hi
as of now minimum 300 Licenses. For SMB we may need to wait couple of months.

[#3]

And to add to this, you also need 500 E3 or E5 licenses.

Microsoft will lower the requirements as soon as there's enough resources to go around, main issue is the demand outstrips the supply and the connected cost to this makes it so that they need to prioritize clients that can cover those costs of the hardware and computing. There for it's 300 licenses

[#4]

As a small business with 250 users should I be moving off current Business Premuim & Standard licensing and be moving towards E3 and E5 to be eligible for Copilot when they reduce the 300 threshold? 

[#5]

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@NicolasKheirallah wrote:

And to add to this, you also need 500 E3 or E5 licenses.

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500 E3/E5 AND 300 Copilot licenses?  Sounds like we will never be eligible then. 

[#6]

@peterrobinson  @KarenJones2667 

The requirement will become lower, we just don't know when but I'm guess and hopping within the year.  They are working hard at it but there's is a bottleneck in the amount of Hardware and space to install the additional hardware required to run Copilot/AzureAI.  So for example Microsoft is building a lot of new data centers just for this.   

My guess the next requirement jump will be 250 E3/E5 and 50 Copilot licenses.

[#7]

If your users are already on the E3 plan - you are, as I understand it, already eligible. You need to enable it as part of the "Extra Features".

[#8]

The number of entreprise licenses needed is a hard limit, you won't be able to buy copilot licenses without having 500 licenses

[#9]

Is there documentation highlighting 500 licenses? We have been told and only read 300 ME3 or ME% licenses...

[#10]

It's 500 EA licenses(E3 or E5) or buying it via CSP. There's no Microsoft link currently as I can find but from 1 nov 2023, the requirement was company that wants to acquire Copilot in the first wave will need to have at least 500 E3 or E5 licenses in your organization.

Here's a link:

https://www.insight.com/en_US/content-and-resources/blog/meet-your-new-favorite-coworker-m365-copilo...

[#11]

I cannot find a great public Microsoft source but we are in agreement with them for 300 Copilot licenses + 100 ME3.

This link does highlight 300 for extensibility purposes. Unsure why it would list that if 500 is the minimum.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/extensibility/prerequisites#enterprise-custo...

[#12]

I Believe it's a miss, I'll ask around.

But yeah 500 Seats of Enterpreise agreements is required to be able to buy copilot licenses

[#13]

I believe the threshold for E3/E5 is 500. Only Business Premium is 300.

[#14 · Accepted solution]

Updated today: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/01/15/bringing-the-full-power-of-copilot-to-more-people-and-bu...

[#15]

Tremendous news all around!

[#16]

Thank you Mike. Appreciate you posting that link.

[#17]

@Mike O'Neill , All,

Good news, my very small business with only myself as employee got the "Copilot for Microsoft 365" licence! 

It is still very important to validate the information and clean up the files used by Copilot for its sources.

Enjoy,