Microsoft shares fell sharply around midday on Tuesday after Anthropic unveiled a set of workplace tools for its Claude AI assistant that compete with Microsoft’s Office software. The stock traded at $535.90 at about 2:50 p.m. Eastern time, down $9.28, or 1.7%, from Monday’s close of $545.18. It fell as low as $526.37, down 3.5%.
The drop came quickly. Microsoft traded near $544 at about 12:20 p.m. and fell to about $528 by 12:40 p.m., after Anthropic announced the new products at an event in San Francisco.
Anthropic introduced Claude Sheets, which builds and edits spreadsheets that can be exported to Excel, along with Claude Whiteboards and Claude Data, a tool for dashboards. “Starting today, Claude can build spreadsheets, whiteboards, and dashboards with your team,” the company said. Sheets and Whiteboards are in beta on paid Claude plans, Anthropic said. It also said Claude Meetings, which joins video calls to take notes, is coming soon.
The launch comes as Anthropic prepares to go public. In an amended filing with the SEC on Tuesday, Anthropic said it expects its initial public offering to price between $70 and $78 a share.
