Anthropic launched a beta version of Claude for Word, another challenge to Microsoft’s software empire and a bid to appeal more to the legal profession.
The AI startup, having pushed Claude into Excel and PowerPoint earlier this year, said its latest add-in for Word is “designed for professionals who work extensively with documents, particularly in legal review, financial memo drafting, and iterative editing.”
On Saturday, Anthropic said Claude for Word would allow users to ask questions about their documents and get answers with clickable section citations.
Other features include the ability to edit selected text while preserving surrounding styles, numbering, and formatting, while a “tracked changes mode” would allow users to accept or reject every edit as a revision, Anthropic explained.
Claude could also work through comment threads, editing the anchored text and replying with what it changed, according to the release.
Anthropic gave examples of prompts lawyers could try when reviewing a legal contract while using Claude for Word.
“Summarize the key commercial terms: parties, term, governing law, and anything off-market.”
“Flag provisions that deviate from standard market position, ranked by severity.”
“Make the indemnification mutual and insert our standard fallback language.”
“Work through all five reviewer comments as tracked changes.”
“What did the counterparty change, and which revisions are dealbreakers?”
It’s currently available only to Team and Enterprise plans.
With this and other recent launches, Anthropic is making clear it no longer wants to be known primarily as a tool for developers. It wants Claude embedded across the enterprise, supporting finance teams, HR departments, analysts, and executives alike.
Anthropic’s lawyer said the US government is “pressuring” the startup’s customers to go to rival AI providers amid an escalating fight between the Claude developer and the Department of Defense.
During a status conference on Tuesday, Michael Mongan, an attorney for Anthropic, said the Defense Department’s decision to effectively blacklist the startup from working with the US military is bringing “real and irreparable harm” to the company each day.
Mongan said customers have begun “expressing doubt” about working with Anthropic and that the government has been on a pressure campaign to get Anthropic’s customers to drop the provider and go to competing AI companies.
“We’ve had university systems and business-to-business companies that have switched to competing AI companies,” Mongan said. “And this is all the predictable result of the defendant’s actions and the uncertainty they’ve created, as well as the fact that defendants have been affirmatively reaching out to our customers and pressuring them to stop working with Anthropic and switch to other AI companies.”
Last month, after contract negotiations with the AI startup fell apart, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Anthropic was a “supply chain risk” and framed the move as extending beyond direct military work.
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“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth said in an X post on February 27.
The scope of the supply chain risk label is in dispute. Microsoft previously told Business Insider that its lawyers concluded the company can still use Anthropic for non-military-related work. The company also filed an amicus brief, urging the federal court to temporarily block the government’s supply chain risk designation.
The issue centers on Anthropic’s stance that its frontier model, Claude, cannot be deployed for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of US citizens. Defense officials have said in response that a private company cannot dictate what the military can and cannot do.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a blog post on February 26 that the company could not accede to the government’s demand for unrestricted, lawful use of its model. A day later, Hegseth formally designated Anthropic a supply chain risk.
Anthropic sued the government on Monday, seeking a temporary restraining order to continue doing business with the government as the case proceeds. The company said in the suit that the Defense Department did not provide adequate grounds to label it a national security risk.
In addition, the company said the designation has never been applied to an American company and that the move was retaliatory, violating the company’s First Amendment rights to express its views on AI safety and limitations.
The fallout from Anthropic’s blacklisting has been swift, according to legal filings.
Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer, said in a declaration filed on Mondaythat the DoD had contacted several “portfolio companies about their use of Claude” and that those clients have “grown worried and uncertain” about their ability to use the model.
The CFO said the government’s action could reduce Anthropic’s 2026 revenue by “multiple billions of dollars.”
Spokespeople for Anthropic and the Pentagon, as well as Anthropic’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment.
Microsoft said Anthropic’s AI tools aren’t going anywhere on its platforms despite the Pentagon blacklisting the startup.
The Pentagon on Thursday formally told Anthropic that “the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the designation effectively bars companies with defense contracts from doing business with Anthropic.
Anthropic has said it plans to challenge the decision in court.
The designation follows a dispute between the AI startup and the Pentagon over how its Claude models could be used. Anthropic has said it will not allow its technology to be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider on Thursday that the company’s “lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers.”
Claude will still be available to customers through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry, except for the Department of War, the spokesperson said in a statement.
“We can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defense related projects,” it added.
Microsoft has deepened its ties with Anthropic in recent months. In November, the companies said that Anthropic would spend $30 billion on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, while Microsoft agreed to invest up to $5 billion in the startup.
Microsoft also said in September that it was integrating Anthropic’s models into Microsoft 365 Copilot alongside systems from OpenAI.
The Anthropic-Pentagon saga
In a statement published on Thursday evening, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company is in talks with the Defense Department even as it is preparing for court.
“I would like to reiterate that we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible,” Amodei wrote.
However, Emil Michael, a Department of War official, said in a post on X following Amodei’s statement that negotiations are off the table.
“I want to end all speculation: there is no active @DeptofWar negotiation with @AnthropicAI,” Michael wrote.
Amodei also offered an apology in his statement after The Information reported that he had privately blasted the White House in a memo to staff after talks with the Pentagon fell apart.
In the memo, Amodei wrote that the administration disliked his company because he had not offered “dictator-style praise to Trump.”
“Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences,” Amodei said on Thursday.
While OpenAI locks down Washington, Anthropic is locking down users and rocketing to the top of the App Store.
Anthropic has been sidelined in Washington following a public dispute with the Department of Defense over how its AI models would be deployed. President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to phase out its technology.
Meanwhile, OpenAI has secured new ground, with CEO Sam Altman announcing in a Friday night post on X that it had reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy AI models in its classified network.
OpenAI’s agreement has left some loyal ChatGPT users uneasy about OpenAI’s ambitions, prompting online debates about the ethical implications — and some saying they were defecting to its rival Claude.
As of 6:38 p.m. ET on Saturday, Claude ranked number one among the most downloaded productivity apps on Apple’s App Store, trailing ChatGPT.
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Converts have taken to social media to share screenshots documenting their switch.
Pop musician Katy Perry wrote that she was “done” on X, alongside a screenshot of Claude’s pricing page, with a red heart around the $20-per-month “Pro” plan.
Another X user, Adam Lyttle, wrote “Made the switch,” alongside a screenshot of his email inbox with a receipt from Anthropic and cancellation confirmation from OpenAI.
On Reddit’s ChatGPT subreddit, dozens of users say they’ve deleted their accounts and are urging others to do the same.
“Cancel ChatGPT” has become a common refrain online, while some users have taken a more personal tone, saying Altman’s move “crossed the line.”
The agreement hasn’t polarized all AI users, however.
In one Reddit thread, several commenters said the news does not affect their choice of AI model, arguing that Anthropic’s work with Palantir raises similar concerns. In November 2024, Anthropic, Palantir, and Amazon Web Services struck an agreement to provide US intelligence and defense agencies access to Claude models.
After Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said he would designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk to national security,” Anthropic said it would “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”
In his Friday post, Altman said the Department of War had agreed with two of OpenAI’s safety principles.
“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” Altman wrote on X. “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”
By Saturday afternoon, OpenAI published a more detailed description of its contract with the DoW, including the specific language it used surrounding the use of its models for surveillance and autonomous weapons.
On the topic of autonomous weapons, OpenAI said:
The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities.
On the topic of mass surveillance, OpenAI said:
The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities.
While some chatbot users suggested it’s all fair in business, war, and federal procurement, others suggested the Pentagon’s stance may have handed Anthropic a public relations win.
X user Tae Kim joked that Hegseth might need a new title: “Secretary Hegseth Chief of Claude Marketing.”
President Donald Trump says federal agencies won’t be using Anthropic’s technology anymore.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.
It comes amid a dispute between the AI giant and the Department of Defense.
Trump said that there would be a six-month phase-out period for departments, including the Department of Defense, that are “using Anthropic’s products, at various levels.”
“WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s announcement comes just a few hours before the Friday evening deadline defense officials had given Anthropic to agree to the military’s terms of use for the company’s frontier model, Claude.
Earlier this week, the two parties came to an impasse over how the military can deploy Claude.
The issue appeared to revolve around two safeguards Anthropic was not willing to drop: mass surveillance of US citizens and autonomous weapons.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei until Friday, 5:01 p.m. Eastern Time to get on board with the military. Hegseth also warned that the government could invoke the Defense Production Act — a wartime law that gives the president broad authority over a company’s resources — and designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk.
Both would be unprecedented moves by the government against an American technology company, experts previously told Business Insider.
On Thursday, Amodei published a blog post stating that the Defense Department had added language to its contract allowing for “any lawful use” of its model.
A source familiar with the negotiations told Business Insider that this language effectively gave the military discretion over how it uses Claude.
The Anthropic CEO said in his post that the company would prefer to continue serving the department but that it could not “in good conscience accede to their request.”
