Anthropic’s Claude Cowork is plugging AI into more boring enterprise stuff

On Tuesday, Anthropic announced updates to its Claude Cowork platform that allow the AI to help with a wider range of office tasks. Claude Cowork can now connect with several popular office apps, including Google Workspace, Docusign, and WordPress. New pre-built plug-ins can also automate tasks in a range of fields, including HR, design, engineering, and finance. Additionally, according to Anthropic, “Claude can now also handle multi-step tasks end-to-end across Excel and PowerPoint,” passing context between the two apps.

The update is Anthropic’s latest push into AI agents, following the initial launch of Claude Cowork last month. Anthropic’s coding agent, Claude Code, has been growing in popularity over recent months, even with Anthropic’s rival Microsoft, which has its own AI features for office tasks. Earlier this month, Anthropic also released Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6, both of which it says are better at performing complex, multi-step tasks, including work-related tasks like navigating spreadsheets.

The new Claude Cowork tools will be available starting on Tuesday to all users on Cowork, which is currently a research preview feature limited to users on paid Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscriptions.