Microsoft Shares Fall Nearly 2% as Anthropic Rolls Out Work Tools to Compete With Excel
Key Facts
Microsoft shares fell nearly 2% on Tuesday, November 10, after Investing.com reported that Bloomberg had said Anthropic was preparing to launch a suite of AI-powered work tools. Among them is a spreadsheet app aimed at competing with Microsoft’s Excel and Google’s Sheets, putting office productivity software at the center of AI companies’ expansion. Anthropic also announced Claude Sheets, Claude Whiteboards and Claude Data, according to Reuters. Whiteboards lets teams turn discussions into timelines and action plans. Claude Meetings is beginning a trial for Anthropic’s Team and Enterprise customers via Google Meet, with plans to expand to other meeting platforms.
Anthropic said Claude Meetings can follow conversations and turn discussion into work during a call. This includes drafting plans, creating timelines and answering questions about the conversation, Reuters reported via Investing.com. The use case extends Claude’s tools from conversation to collaborative tasks linked to meetings. But the initial trial is limited to Team and Enterprise customers via Google Meet. The company plans to expand the service to other meeting platforms, though the report did not specify when.
By contrast, Nicholas Lin, Anthropic’s product lead, described Claude Sheets as a relatively basic product. Investing.com quoted him as saying the tool was not designed for more complex financial modeling or advanced enterprise workloads. That description sets clear limits on the product’s scope at launch, even as it enters a field where spreadsheet tools used in business compete. Coverage says Microsoft is integrating AI into Office products through Copilot, while Anthropic is building its own applications for everyday work tasks. These moves combine broader use of Claude with direct competition in some functions performed by established productivity software.
The move comes as Microsoft and Anthropic combine commercial cooperation with competition over work tools. On November 4, EL7 reported that Microsoft shares rose 5.95% after Anthropic pledged to spend $44.9 billion on Microsoft cloud services. The Associated Press also said a cloud infrastructure partnership involving Microsoft, Anthropic and Nvidia included Microsoft investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic. Ahead of Tuesday’s session, Microsoft shares closed at $545.18 on November 9, according to EL7’s daily data. The report on the November 10 session’s decline cited a fall of about 2%; the other daily prices in the draft could not be verified.