Microsoft and Anthropic team up to bring Claude Cowork to Microsoft 365

Microsoft (MSFT) is bringing Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Claude Cowork to its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI platform. Called Copilot Cowork, the service, which Microsoft says it developed successful adjacent collaboration with Anthropic, tin execute tasks connected endeavor users’ behalf, specified arsenic gathering presentations, pulling information into spreadsheets successful Excel, and emailing co-workers to acceptable up meetings.

The update arms Microsoft with the AI level that rocked the software-as-a-service manufacture past month, sending shares of stalwarts similar Salesforce (CRM), ServiceNow (NOW), Thomson Reuters (TRI), and Intuit (INTU) plummeting.

And portion they’ve recovered immoderate of those losses, the stocks are inactive down since Anthropic debuted Cowork connected Jan. 30.

For Microsoft, the update adds agentic capabilities to its existing AI offerings, expanding Microsoft 365’s wide usefulness and driving further endeavor adoption.

The institution says it’s continuing to spot occurrence successful AI sales, with paid Microsoft 365 seats increasing 160% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth successful its astir caller 4th and regular progressive usage expanding 10x.

“Expansion is besides accelerating arsenic the fig of customers deploying Copilot astatine important standard — much than 35,000 seats — tripled twelvemonth implicit year. Just past week, Mercedes Benz announced a planetary rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot, pursuing caller investments from NASA, Fiserv, ING, the University of Kentucky, the University of Manchester, the US Department of the Interior, and Westpac,” the institution said successful a statement.

In summation to Copilot Cowork, Microsoft announced it is bringing caller agentic AI functionalities to Microsoft 365 Copilot successful Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. That besides includes a much almighty Copilot Chat.

The institution besides said its Microsoft Agent 365, an AI cause monitoring and governance platform, is present mostly disposable for $15 per idiosyncratic per month.

Toss each of Microsoft’s 365 offerings together, including Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Copilot 365, and you’ve got the company’s Microsoft 365 E7 suite. That costs $99 per idiosyncratic a month, little than buying each of the services connected their own, the institution said.

Microsoft and its chap hyperscalers Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), on with societal media elephantine Meta (META), are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into gathering retired AI information centers, and portion Microsoft has its unreality concern done which it sells unreality computing and AI capabilities that customers entree remotely, the institution besides relies connected income of its productivity suites.

And Wall Street has been particularly anxious to spot whether Microsoft is successfully monetizing its immense AI investments crossed some its unreality services and bundle offerings.