Microsoft's Copilot Cowork Now Features Anthropic's Claude in E7 Launch

Microsoft has introduced a new AI assistant called Copilot Cowork, designed to perform tasks in the background, generate documents, and operate across various Microsoft 365 applications. The company announced this development on Monday, highlighting its integration of technology from Anthropic’s Claude family of models into its existing Copilot assistant. This move marks another step in Microsoft's expansion beyond its long-standing partnership with OpenAI.

Copilot Cowork is part of what Microsoft refers to as Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Alongside this release, the company also introduced a new $99-per-user Microsoft 365 E7 tier, set to launch in May. This tier represents an updated level of its technology licensing program for businesses, bundling Copilot, identity management tools, and a new $15 product called Agent 365 for managing AI agents.

The E7 tier comes at a cost that is 65% higher than the current $60 E5 subscription. Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s commercial business, stated in a blog post that customers have indicated the E5 plan alone is no longer sufficient. He emphasized that users prefer a single, trusted solution rather than multiple tools stitched together.

Microsoft claims that Copilot Cowork can handle multiple tasks simultaneously by accessing a user's calendar, email, and files, completing work without constant supervision. Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s president of Business Applications & Agents, described how Copilot Cowork allows users to take action and complete activities in the background, enabling them to accomplish more work regularly.

In a demo video, Lamanna showcased Copilot Cowork analyzing a month of meetings with direct reports, compiling customer notes from a business trip, and generating a competitive analysis along with a Word document and Excel spreadsheet. The company highlighted the role of Work IQ, its intelligence layer that connects Copilot to a user’s work patterns, relationships, and content across Microsoft 365.

Copilot Cowork operates within the security and compliance boundaries of Microsoft 365, with actions and outputs auditable by default. Microsoft positions its multi-model approach as a key differentiator, stating that it will select the most appropriate model for each task regardless of the provider.

However, the announcement has received mixed reactions. Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor and author of “Co-Intelligence,” raised questions on LinkedIn about whether Copilot Cowork will continue to use lower-end or older models without informing users. He also questioned whether Microsoft would keep the product updated, noting that Anthropic’s standalone Cowork product was built quickly using Claude Code and continues to evolve rapidly.

Mollick pointed out that Microsoft has a history of launching leading products and then allowing them to stagnate. He expressed curiosity about whether the company's pace of updates will change.

Currently, Copilot Cowork is available in a limited research preview and will be rolled out to Microsoft’s Frontier program later this month.

[Editor’s Note:
Charles Lamanna will be among the speakers at ’s upcoming AI event, Agents of Transformation, scheduled for March 24.
More info and tickets.]

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