Claude is coming to your spreadsheets - but is it enough to make you an emperor of Excel, and what will Microsoft Copilot think? (www.techradar.com)

Anthropic has embedded its Claude assistant directly into Microsoft Excel via a sidebar that can read, edit and explain every cell, fix formulas, and generate new sheets on demand — with every action tracked and linked to the exact cells and formulas it used. The integration is entering a limited beta research preview for about 1,000 Max, Enterprise and Teams testers before a wider rollout. Claude also leverages Anthropic’s existing financial-data connectors (Moody’s, LSEG, Egnyte, Aiera) to pull live pricing, earnings transcripts and credit reports, giving spreadsheet analyses real-time market context. This move is significant because it places a large LLM-driven assistant inside the day-to-day environment of analysts and accountants, promising faster model-driven workflow automation, audited explainability at the cell level, and tighter access to proprietary finance datasets — all factors that could materially speed reporting and improve accuracy. It also directly challenges Microsoft Copilot; Claude’s edge is deep financial-data integrations, while adoption will hinge on production reliability, governance, security and user trust. Early enterprise deployments cited by Anthropic (AIG, Norges Bank) suggest big productivity gains, but independent validation and robust controls will determine whether Claude becomes a mainstream Excel co-pilot for finance teams.