An analysis of more than one million Cowork sessions shows that about half of all usage falls into two categories: business operations and text-based work.
Anthropic has broken down how people actually use its chat agent, Claude Cowork. The analysis draws on a sample of 1.2 million anonymized sessions from May 11 to 31, 2026, spanning more than 600,000 organizations. An automated system assigned each session to one of 20 work categories. According to Anthropic, about half of Cowork usage goes toward what the company calls "the work around the work," tasks that are rarely anyone's core responsibility but come with virtually every office job.
Two categories make up half of all usage
The largest category is "Business process and operations" at 33.4 percent. Anthropic says this includes things like pulling scattered status updates into a single report, building onboarding checklists, or reconciling spreadsheets. Second is "Content creation and copywriting" at 16.4 percent, covering drafts, slide decks, posts, and proposals. Together, these two broad categories account for the "roughly half" Anthropic describes.
Business processes and operations make up the largest share of all Claude Cowork sessions at 33.4%, followed by content creation and copywriting at 16.4%. The data shows AI is used most often for structuring and communication tasks in knowledge work. | Image: Anthropic
