Microsoft Launches Copilot Cowork — Claude Enters Microsoft 365
Microsoft announced Copilot Cowork, a cloud-based AI agent built in collaboration with Anthropic that brings Claude Cowork’s multi-step task execution into Microsoft 365. Users describe the outcome they want and Cowork breaks it down into steps, reasoning across apps like Outlook, Teams, Excel, and PowerPoint to get it done. The system uses Microsoft’s “Work IQ” to ground every action in the user’s emails, meetings, messages, and files.
Copilot Cowork is in research preview now with broader access through Microsoft’s Frontier program in late March. It runs within a customer’s M365 tenant with enterprise data protection baked in. Microsoft also unveiled the M365 E7 “Frontier Suite” at $99/user/month — bundling E5, Copilot, and Agent 365 into a single license. GA is May 1. This is the biggest Microsoft licensing change in a decade, and Anthropic is at the center of it.
Trump Prepares Executive Order to Ban Anthropic Across All Agencies
The White House is preparing a formal executive order directing every federal agency to immediately cease use of Anthropic’s technology. The move escalates the Pentagon dispute to a government-wide ban. White House spokesperson Liz Huston framed it as a fight against what the administration calls “woke AI,” stating the president will not allow a company’s terms of service to dictate how the military operates.
Anthropic fired back by filing two federal lawsuits on Monday challenging the supply chain risk designation as unconstitutional retaliation. The company argues the designation — the first time this authority has been used against a U.S. company — was punishment for refusing to give the military unrestricted access to Claude for applications like autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has maintained the company will work with the military only within its ethical red lines.
Anthropic Launches Code Review for Claude Code
Anthropic shipped Code Review, a multi-agent system built into Claude Code that automatically reviews pull requests on GitHub. When a PR is opened, the system dispatches multiple AI agents in parallel. Each agent independently hunts for bugs, then they cross-verify each other’s findings to filter false positives and rank issues by severity. The result: fewer missed bugs and less noise than single-pass review tools.
Code Review is in research preview for Claude for Teams and Enterprise customers. Pricing is token-based, averaging $15–$25 per review depending on PR size and complexity. The Register called it “pricey and sluggish” in an early hands-on, but Anthropic is betting that enterprise engineering orgs will pay for quality — especially as AI-generated code volumes surge. Uber, Salesforce, and Accenture are among the first enterprise users. Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has now surpassed $2.5 billion.
Sonnet 5 “Fennec” Spotted in Vertex AI Logs
Claude Sonnet 5, codenamed “Fennec,” has appeared in Google Cloud Vertex AI logs, fueling speculation about an imminent release. Leaks from multiple sources suggest Fennec could be priced around 50% lower than Opus 4.5 while delivering comparable or superior benchmark performance. If accurate, that would make it the most cost-effective frontier model on the market.
Anthropic hasn’t confirmed any release timeline, but the Vertex AI sighting follows a pattern — both Sonnet 4.5 and Sonnet 4.6 appeared in cloud provider logs weeks before their official launches. Developers are already speculating about what Fennec means for the Claude Code and Cowork pricing tiers, since Sonnet models are the default for free and Pro users.
Japan Times: “Anthropic’s Partners Are Making a Deal with the AI Devil”
A sharp op-ed in the Japan Times argues that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon’s public backing of Anthropic is less about principle and more about self-interest. The piece contends that these companies need Claude in their product catalogs to compete, and their willingness to publicly defy the Pentagon reflects the leverage Anthropic has built — not any shared commitment to AI safety.
The analysis raises a real question for the industry: when cloud providers stake their reputation on backing a company the U.S. government is actively trying to blacklist, what happens if the political winds shift further? For Anthropic, the hyperscaler backing is a lifeline. For the hyperscalers, it’s a calculated bet that the Pentagon dispute won’t spill over into commercial procurement decisions. So far, that bet is holding.
Enterprise Subscriptions Quadruple as Pentagon Drama Drives Adoption
Buried in the Code Review launch coverage is a striking data point: Anthropic’s enterprise subscriptions have quadrupled since the start of the year. The Streisand effect is in full force — every headline about the Pentagon ban drives more consumer and enterprise sign-ups. Claude remains the #1 free app on both the App Store and Play Store, and the company continues to break daily sign-up records.
The enterprise growth is especially notable because it suggests the supply chain risk designation isn’t scaring off commercial customers. If anything, the fight with the Pentagon has positioned Anthropic as the company willing to draw ethical lines on AI — a brand story that resonates with the same enterprise buyers who care about responsible AI policies in their vendor stack.