Microsoft and Google are late to AI coding, but 'absolutely critical' they compete for growth

Microsoft is moving to catch up in the fast-growing AI coding market, preparing to unveil a coding model at its Build conference that will be integrated into GitHub Copilot and priced to emphasize cost competitiveness. Google has already pushed agentic and coding-focused upgrades (Antigravity 2.0, Gemini 3.5 Flash) and launched a $100/month AI developer tier. Anthropic and OpenAI currently lead with Claude Code and Codex; Anthropic just closed financing at a $965 billion valuation and confidentially filed for an IPO. Market research projects the AI code tools market to grow ~26% annually from $9.3 billion today to about $30 billion by 2031. Analysts say competition is critical because coding tools drive cloud usage, developer lock‑in and model training scale — implications that could shift developer preferences, cloud workloads and revenue mix for big tech players.