Salesforce $CRM ( ▼ 7.07% ) is getting hit hard on Tuesday.
Shares were down more than 6% in afternoon trading, putting the stock on track for its worst day in nearly two years. One possible driver: Anthropic just debuted Cowork, a new autonomous digital assistant designed to complete office tasks.
Anthropic Brings Agents to the Office
Cowork is essentially an agent-based upgrade to Anthropic’s Claude, built to do more than answer questions.
The tool can access and manipulate files, automate workflows, and execute tasks on a user’s behalf, pushing further into the kind of workplace AI territory that Salesforce has been positioning as a major growth pillar.
Why This Matters for Salesforce
Salesforce has been aggressively marketing its own workplace AI agent product, Agentforce, which CEO Marc Benioff has described as one of the company’s two main “momentum drivers.”
That makes Anthropic entering the same agent-workflow lane a competitive threat narrative, even if Cowork is still early.
Benioff Has Been Going All-In on the Agent Pitch
Salesforce’s agent strategy has become so central that in December, Benioff said he would even consider renaming the company “Agentforce.”
So when a major AI lab like Anthropic drops a competing agent product, it is not just another AI headline. It hits right at the story Salesforce is selling investors.