By Jeremy Kahn
Publication Date: 2026-03-09 13:00:00
Microsoft has announced a new set of products to get enterprise customers to build AI agents on its platform, including a new Copilot Cowork product built on top of Anthropic’s AI product Claude Cowork and a new business productivity software bundle that includes its own AI offerings.
The new products, which Microsoft is calling “Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot” journey, come as the software giant seeks to combat increased competition in the AI agent space both from rival business productivity software companies, such as Salesforce, and frontier AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which received billions of dollars in strategic investments from Microsoft but are nonetheless increasingly pursuing the U.S. tech giant’s traditional customer base. Microsoft also faces competition for AI agents from open source offerings like OpenClaw.
Microsoft hopes to assuage investors concerned that AI agents will reduce companies’ need to rely on traditional software-as-a-service…
