Microsoft adds Anthropic AI agents to Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft is adding Anthropic’s Claude Cowork to Microsoft 365 Copilot, giving business users a new tool that can do actual office work instead of just answering questions. The new product is called Copilot Cowork, and Microsoft said it built it closely with Anthropic. The service is made for enterprise customers. It can create presentations, pull information into Excel files, and send emails to co-workers to arrange meetings. That puts Microsoft deeper into the fast-growing race to sell agent-based workplace software. The launch also gives Microsoft access to the same type of AI product that rattled the software market last month. When Anthropic first introduced Cowork on Jan. 30, shares of big software names like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Thomson Reuters, and Intuit dropped hard. Those stocks later recovered part of the damage, but they still remained below their levels from before Cowork appeared. For Microsoft, adding these agent features makes Microsoft 365 more useful to companies that want office software to handle more work on its own. Microsoft expands Copilot with new agent tools across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook Microsoft said this update is part of a much bigger push inside its workplace AI business. Alongside Copilot Cowork, the company said it is bringing more agent functions to Microsoft 365 Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It also said Copilot Chat is getting more powerful. The goal is simple. Microsoft wants workers to use one system for writing, data work, slides, email, and agent tasks, instead of jumping between separate apps and vendors. The company also shared fresh sales numbers. Microsoft said paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats rose 160% year over year in its most recent quarter. It also said daily active usage climbed 10 times. The company said growth is getting stronger among large customers too. In its statement, Microsoft said:- “Expansion is also accelerating as the number of customers deploying Copilot at a significant scale, more than 35,000 seats, tripled year over year. Just last week, Mercedes-Benz announced a global rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot, following recent investments from NASA, Fiserv, ING, the University of Kentucky, the University of Manchester, the US Department of the Interior, and Westpac.” Microsoft also said Microsoft Agent 365, its AI agent monitoring and governance platform, is now generally available for $15 per user per month. That product is meant to help companies watch, control, and scale agents across business workflows. The company then tied its wider products together in a larger bundle. It said customers can get Microsoft 365 E7, which includes offerings such as Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Copilot 365, for $99 per user per month. Microsoft said that the price is lower than buying the products separately. The company gave more numbers on the early usage of Agent 365. Microsoft said:- “We are seeing tremendous momentum with our preview customers. In just two months, tens of millions of agents have appeared in the Agent 365 Registry. We have tens of thousands of customers that are already adopting Agent 365 to securely govern and scale AI agents across enterprise workflows.” Anthropic launches Claude Marketplace and uses one contract billing to cut enterprise buying delays The Microsoft update arrived as Anthropic pushed its own enterprise plan further with Claude Marketplace, a new marketplace for tools built on Claude’s large language models. Analysts said the main idea is to cut one of the biggest problems in enterprise generative AI adoption, which is procurement. Big companies often move slowly because every vendor deal needs separate approvals, contracts, invoicing, and renewals. Claude Marketplace is built to reduce that friction. The marketplace started with a small group of partners. Those partners include Replit, Lovable Labs, GitLab, Snowflake, Harvey AI, and Rogo. Their tools cover software development, legal work, financial analysis, and enterprise data operations. The billing model is central to the pitch. Charges for marketplace tools are applied against a company’s existing committed spend on Claude, which means customers do not need separate vendor contracts or extra payment processes for each tool they add. Analyst Pareekh Jain explained the benefit in direct terms. Pareekh said:- “Historically, a company would need to negotiate separately with Anthropic and with Harvey or GitLab. Anthropic will manage all invoicing for partner spend, so it’s one contract, one invoice, one renewal conversation. For large enterprises where procurement cycles can take months, this is genuinely valuable.” Analysts said that a one-contract model could remove months of buying delays and help place Claude at the center of enterprise AI systems built for stricter governance needs. Pareekh also said Anthropic has another reason to structure the marketplace this way. Pareekh said, “Anthropic earns primarily through API consumption, so every partner application running on Claude generates token revenue. In that sense, the marketplace functions as a distribution engine rather than a toll booth, an approach similar to Amazon Web Services’ early ecosystem expansion, where lowering friction for partners accelerated adoption before deeper monetization.” If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .