Microsoft today announced the launch of Copilot Cowork, a new enterprise AI agent built in close collaboration with Anthropic, designed to autonomously execute complex, multi-step tasks within Microsoft 365 environments. This marks the third wave in the evolution of Microsoft 365 Copilot, shifting from assistance to autonomous task completion. Copilot Cowork can, for example, prepare for a customer meeting by assembling presentations, gathering financial data, emailing team members, and scheduling prep time—all from a single user request. The feature runs securely within a customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant and integrates with Microsoft’s Work IQ layer, which draws intelligence from emails, files, documents, meetings, and chats. The company is piloting Copilot Cowork with select customers and plans to release it as a research preview in March. Additionally, Microsoft’s Agent 365, a control plane for monitoring, governing, and securing AI agents across the enterprise, will become generally available on May 1 at a price of $15 per user per month. This launch underscores Microsoft’s strategy to compete in the growing AI agent space against rivals like Salesforce, OpenAI, and Anthropic, while addressing investor concerns about AI’s impact on traditional SaaS models.