Anthropic has announced that its Claude Cowork AI tool is out of preview and is now available to all users. The company has also introduced a few new controls in Cowork for enterprises. The autonomous AI tool first arrived on January 12 as a research preview. The company stated that it has been used by millions of users since then, with lakhs of users trying it every week.
Its capabilities are not limited to coders. Claude Cowork can assist white-collar workers in various tasks, including payroll calculation, analysing the stock market of the day, handling legal aspects for clients, and more. Claude Cowork was released after the company realised that the popularity of its Claude Code AI tool had expanded beyond coding tasks and was being used for other types of work.
Anthropic built Claude Cowork with an aim to enable everyone to work with Claude in a simpler way. Users only need to grant access to certain files and folders on their computer and define the task. Claude then completes the work without requiring any additional tools.
Rise in popularity with plugins
Although the tool was popular among AI enthusiasts and professionals since its launch, it gained wider attention when the company enhanced its capabilities with new plugins. These plugins were highly capable, leading some investors to believe that SaaS (Software as a Service) is declining and prompting them to pull money from SaaS companies such as TCS and others.
The plugins consist of pre-recorded instructions that simplify different workflows. For instance, the Finance plugin in Claude Cowork can analyse financials, build models, and track key metrics.
Strong growth reflected in numbers
The growing popularity of Anthropic’s AI tools is reflected in its financial performance. The company reported annualised recurring revenue of $9 billion at the end of 2025, which has now reached $30 billion in March 2026.
Anthropic is building on this growth momentum and is rapidly expanding its enterprise tools. It recently launched its latest artificial intelligence model, Claude Mythos Preview, followed by Claude Managed Agents, which make it easier for developers to build and run AI agents.
Impact on industry rivals
Its growth has also emerged as a concern for rival companies. OpenAI has shut down its AI video-generation platform Sora and no longer supports video generation across its entire portfolio, including developer products.
Due to the increasing popularity of Anthropic’s enterprise products, OpenAI leadership has reportedly asked employees to stop “side quests” to focus more on enterprise offerings.
