Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) on Tuesday unveiled a host of new enterprise capabilities for its Claude AI, less than a month after the company launched plugins for the platform, sending software stocks into a tailspin.
The updated features, Anthropic said, include plugins designed for specific departments within an organization, such as human resources and investment banking; allow customers to create customized plugins tailored to specific company tasks; and connect Claude to existing software, including Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Drive and Gmail, DocuSign (DOCU), and LegalZoom (LZ).
“We think that the best way to drive enterprise AI adoption is to build dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these plugins … We think of them almost as mini apps,” explained Matt Piccolella, who works on products at Anthropic.
“We think that enterprises will be able to build hundreds of these things and then distribute them to their employees,” he added. “So whether it’s each department wanting its own plugin, whether it’s different kinds of workflows or different things that companies are doing, they can build plugins for those that are custom to their company.”
Piccolella said Anthropic is also offering a marketplace for enterprises to host their own plugins that employees and teams can use to find the right plugins for their teams and needs.
Anthropic’s deeper push into the enterprise space is sure to amplify fears on Wall Street that the company’s products will eventually displace existing software companies.
The thinking is that Anthropic, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), and other AI companies will either build their own software to rival offerings from established software firms or allow businesses to easily develop custom in-house software. Either scenario could spell trouble for software companies.
Anthropic isn’t the only AI company looking to move into the enterprise software space. OpenAI launched its Frontier platform earlier this month, enabling users to build and launch AI agents that work with a company’s existing software services.
The announcements have put enormous pressure on shares of enterprise software developers. ServiceNow (NOW) stock is off more than 23% since Anthropic initially announced Claude Cowork on Jan. 30. Salesforce (CRM) is down 22%, Snowflake (SNOW) has dropped 20%, Intuit (INTU) has fallen 33%, and Thomson Reuters (TRI) has declined a whopping 31%.
Anthropic’s moves aren’t just rocking software companies. On Feb. 20, the AI firm announced Claude Code Security, which it said “scans codebases for security vulnerabilities and suggests targeted software patches for human review.”
