Anthropic is pushing Claude beyond the chat window and into the heart of workplace collaboration. The company has unveiled Claude Meetings, a feature that lets its AI assistant join a Google Meet video call as a visible participant, working in real time while the conversation unfolds. Alongside it, Anthropic introduced Claude Whiteboards and Claude Sheets, two collaborative tools designed to keep teams and their AI assistant working side by side.
- Claude Meetings enters calls: The assistant joins Google Meet as an identified participant, drafts plans, builds timelines, answers chat questions and pulls data from connected apps.
- New collaboration surfaces: Claude Whiteboards turns discussions into visual timelines and task boards, while Claude Sheets lets Claude create and edit spreadsheets alongside users.
- Transparency and limits: Claude announces itself in the meeting chat, requires admin approval to join calls with external guests, and leaves automatically if an unapproved external guest enters.
Claude as a meeting participant, not a silent observer
According to Anthropic, Claude Meetings lets the assistant join a video call as one more participant. During the call, Claude can draft the plan being debated, draw a timeline on a whiteboard, respond to questions in the meeting chat and retrieve information from connected work apps, such as last year’s figures. When the call ends, notes, action items and other materials remain available in claude.ai, the browser-based version of Claude.
The design choices around transparency are notable. Claude identifies itself as a participant and posts a notice in the meeting chat. It will not join calls that include external guests unless an administrator authorizes it, and it automatically exits if an external guest joins. At launch, Claude Meetings is in beta for Team and Enterprise plans, with Google Meet as the only supported platform. An Anthropic spokesperson said the feature will also be available on Microsoft Teams, with a beta rollout for Team and Enterprise customers expected soon.
“Anthropic is moving Claude from a place you go to ask a question to a place where teams do their work,” said Craig Durr, chief analyst at The Collab Collective.
The move places Claude in direct competition with established meeting assistants such as Copilot in Microsoft Teams, Zoom My Notes, Webex’s meeting agent and standalone tools like Otter and Granola. Irwin Lazar, principal analyst at Metrigy, noted that Claude Meetings offers similar functionality to those rivals, but argued that as Claude becomes the place where people work, direct access to meeting notes without copy-paste or paid MCP access makes sense.
Whiteboards and Sheets bring Claude into the canvas
Claude Whiteboards is a shared canvas where teams can brainstorm while Claude organizes contributions by theme, generates timelines, assigns task owners and sets due dates. The result can be converted into a document or presentation. Whiteboards works inside Claude Meetings, so the board updates during the call, and it is available in beta to all paid Claude users across web, desktop and mobile.
Claude Sheets, meanwhile, lets users create and edit spreadsheets with multiple tabs, formulas, formatting and drop-down menus, often from a single prompt. Claude edits cells directly alongside teammates and outlines each change it makes so users can track its work. Files can be exported to Microsoft Excel’s XLSX format or CSV, and Anthropic says users can continue working with partner tools such as Airtable, Asana, monday.com and Smartsheet. Sheets is in beta for paid subscribers on web, desktop and mobile. Anthropic is candid about the limits: its launch post describes the tool as offering “simple spreadsheet functionality” for now and suggests exporting to Excel or using Claude for Excel when full spreadsheet power is needed.
Data, connectors and the broader productivity push
Anthropic also announced that Claude Data, previously called Claude Dashboards, is now generally available. The tool connects to data warehouses and CRM systems, allowing employees to ask questions about business data and generate interactive charts and reports without manually navigating dashboards. In addition, the company upgraded its interactive connectors, which now let users open full versions of supported applications inside Claude, either alongside a conversation or in full-screen view, and ask Claude to make changes within the embedded app. The rollout begins with select partners including Adobe, Atlassian and HubSpot.
The announcements extend a busy period for Anthropic, following the launch of its Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 models and earlier Claude Docs and Slides features. Analysts see the strategy as an effort to make Claude a continuous work surface rather than a destination for one-off questions. Gartner analysts cautioned that Claude Meetings is a beta entrant in a mature market and urged businesses not to extend Claude into meetings until it proves it can operate within approved meeting platforms, repositories, privacy and support models. Durr also recommended that IT, legal and HR agree on consent and recording policies before rolling the feature out, noting that Claude currently acts only when instructed but could become more proactive over time.
For now, Anthropic’s advantage lies less in replacing Excel or Google Workspace outright and more in connecting workflows so context flows from a brainstorming session into a tracker, a spreadsheet or a dashboard. The execution of that promise, and the governance around an AI that sits in meetings, will determine whether Claude becomes a trusted collaborator or just another silent attendee.