Anthropic courts a new kind of customer: small business owners

Anthropic is looking to court smaller companies. To that end, the company announced Wednesday the launch of Claude for Small Business, a new suite of services designed for customers who less resemble Walmart and Starbucks and more resemble the local hardware store or coffee shop.

So far, much of the most intensive AI adoption has occurred at the enterprise level. In the recent past, studies have shown that most companies that scaled AI systems beyond experimental or pilot-level integration tended to be large companies with expansive budgets. This appears to be changing somewhat, as smaller and midsized businesses are seeing greater adoption.

Anthropic’s new bundle of features are designed to serve those new AI converts. They are available via a newly introduced toggle within Claude Cowork, the company’s task-automation platform for business users that can browse the web, manage files, and execute multistep workflows on a user’s behalf. By toggling it on, paying users gain access to a host of automated services, including bookkeeping functions, business insights, and generative tools for ad campaigns.

The new suite also includes integrations between Claude Cowork and a number of software products — like QuickBooks, Canva, Docusign, HubSpot, and PayPal.

“Small businesses account for 44% of U.S. GDP and employ nearly half the private-sector workforce, but their adoption of AI has lagged behind larger enterprises,” the company said. “Tools and training are rarely tailored to the ways small businesses operate, and as a result their use often stops at the chat window.”

For founders and investors, the move signals that the AI platform wars are expanding downmarket and that the next major battleground for user acquisition isn’t the Fortune 500; it’s the 36 million small businesses that make up the backbone of the U.S. economy.

Anthropic is a little behind its competitor, OpenAI, which launched Enterprise ChatGPT at the end of 2023, including an integration for smaller teams called ChatGPT Business.

Anthropic is planning to aggressively promote its new features with a coast-to-coast promotional tour, starting in Chicago and hitting 10 cities in total. At each stop, the company plans to offer a free AI training workshop that will be available to 100 local small business leaders.