Anthropic expands Claude with enterprise plugins and security tools, rattling software stocks
anthropic unveiled a broad set of enterprise capabilities for its Claude AI on Tuesday, less than a month after the company first released plugins for the platform. The moves matter now because the announcements have coincided with steep declines in both enterprise software and cybersecurity equities, intensifying market concern about AI firms encroaching on established software businesses.
Anthropic plugins target departments and custom workflows
The company introduced plugins designed for specific organizational departments, naming human resources and investment banking as examples, and said customers will be able to build customized plugins tailored to particular company tasks. Matt Piccolella, who works on products at Anthropic, described the plugins as "mini apps, " saying enterprises could build dozens, hundreds or even thousands of them and then distribute those tools to employees. Anthropic also announced a marketplace where enterprises can host their own plugins so teams and employees can easily find the right tools.
Connections to Google Drive, Gmail, DocuSign and LegalZoom
The update adds integrations that link Claude to existing software such as Google's Drive and Gmail, DocuSign and LegalZoom, enabling the model to work with established corporate services. The company emphasized that plugins can be tailored to company-specific workflows and that organizations will be able to author custom connectors to their own systems.
Claude Code Security announced on Feb. 20, sparking cybersecurity stock drops
On Feb. 20 Anthropic rolled out Claude Code Security, a tool that scans codebases for security vulnerabilities and suggests targeted software patches for human review. The announcement coincided with a sell-off in cybersecurity shares: CrowdStrike fell 7. 2%, Zscaler dropped 7. 1%, and Palo Alto Networks slid 2. 6% as of the close following the news. The product is framed as a human-in-the-loop scanner that identifies issues and proposes fixes for engineers to vet.
Market reaction: ServiceNow, Salesforce and peers hit hard
Equity markets have reacted sharply to Anthropic's expanding enterprise push. Since Anthropic initially announced a workplace product called Claude Cowork on Jan. 30, ServiceNow shares have declined by more than 23%. Salesforce shares are down 22%, Snowflake has dropped 20%, Intuit has fallen 33%, and Thomson has declined 31%. Market participants have interpreted the new enterprise tooling and security offerings as increasing the risk that AI vendors could either build their own applications to rival established software firms or enable customers to create bespoke in-house software.
OpenAI's Frontier and broader competitive context
Anthropic's announcements follow similar moves in the AI industry. OpenAI launched its Frontier platform earlier this month, offering tools to build and launch AI agents that operate with a company's existing software services. That parallel development has contributed to investor anxiety that multiple AI firms are moving beyond foundational models and into the enterprise software layer.
Analysts note long-standing open-source alternatives and market resilience
Analysts have urged caution in assuming an immediate displacement of incumbent software vendors. They point out that open-source software that companies can use to build custom enterprise offerings has existed for decades, yet the market for third-party software has generally expanded over time. Those analysts also expressed skepticism about the ability of AI-first companies to rapidly usurp market share from long-established, purpose-built enterprise software providers.
What makes this notable is the combination of product breadth and timing: within a month of launching plugins, anthropic doubled down with department-specific tools, a plugin marketplace and a security product, and the sequence of announcements has been followed by quantifiable market moves that highlight investor concern about competitive disruption.
