AI Is An ‘Orchestration’ Layer, Not ‘Displacement’: Anthropic Event Leaves Deutsche Doubting Software’s Imminent Demise

After watching Anthropic’s Enterprise Agents briefing event, Deutsche Bank’s Software research team have even greater conviction that model providers are unlikely to displace software incumbents and are instead positioning themselves and their agents to be an orchestration layer on top of existing and incumbent systems.

Various partnership announcements (detailed below) earlier in the day (including Intuit) along with mentioning the importance of data and context that live in the various systems of record and engagement suggest that it remains very difficult to replicate or displace much of the knowledge, metadata, and workflows incumbent systems have amassed (“Claude is only as useful as the data it connects to”).

This is consistent with Deutsche Bank’s previous thoughts, where they see the risk of AI is less vibe coding or replacing existing systems.

With stocks continuing to embed this risk in current multiples, Deutsche see today’s event as an incremental positive for the software sector.

With that said, we still acknowledge other risks around the costs of software development compressing along with the potential for change in the interaction layer for knowledge workers, thus reducing switching costs for software companies.

This could impact underlying unit economics over the medium to long term.

Additionally, we wonder whether model providers such as Anthropic offering orchestration capabilities could increase competition with incumbent vendors looking to be the control plane for agentic AI.

Lastly,Deutsche continues to see this as positive for the infrastructure/compute layer given the increase in queries by humans/agents against underlying enterprise data.

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Read the details of the presentation below:

Update 1230PM EST:

Goldman out with a note on the event, pointing out covering in names that were sold yesterday and arguing that positive earnings from key names like Salesforce could bring buyers back to the names hit by AI fears:

Anthropic “Enterprise Agents Briefing” kicked off 9:30am, and is ongoing. This event looming contributed to some of the weakness across AI-at-risk complex yesterday (in addition to the already much talked about Citrini blog post). The first hour of trading has been a COVER the news reaction with software complex popping higher.

Several significant single name moves on Anthropic mentions… many of which were primary constituents of the AI-At-Risk Thematic: CRM, INTU, FDS, LZ, DOCU all rallying ~5%. Early read is market is viewing as more of a PARTNERSHIP w incumbent SaaS vendors vs. DISPLACEMENT. We are seeing HF covers. No significant L/O buyers in the space just yet. Decent results from WDAY (tonight) and CRM (tomorrow night) might finally inspire some longer duration buyers to step up to the plate.

Update 1030AM EST:

Anthropic rolled out new AI capabilities for its Claude Cowork agent, designed to automate tasks in areas like human resources, investment banking, and design. Developed with partners including FactSet Research Systems Inc., the tools also allow business customers to customize plug-ins to fit their internal standards. The move is part of a broader push by Anthropic and OpenAI to expand AI deeper into professional industries.

Recent AI releases have unsettled Wall Street, contributing to sharp declines in software and financial services stocks amid fears of disruption. Scott White, Anthropic’s head of product, called it a “little bit of an overreach or overreaction” to tie market swings to a single launch, noting the company now serves over 300,000 business customers and was recently valued at $380 billion in a new funding round.

Updates include department-specific plug-ins for teams like human resources and investment banking, tools that let companies build customized plug-ins for their own workflows, and integrations with existing platforms such as Google Drive, Gmail, DocuSign, and LegalZoom.

Company executive Matt Piccolella said the strategy is to drive adoption by enabling businesses to create and distribute large numbers of tailored “mini apps” across departments. Anthropic is also launching a marketplace where organizations can host and share their internal plug-ins with employees.

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Today, Anthropic took the spotlight with a live virtual event unveiling the latest advancements in its Claude chatbot, a presentation that comes at a tense moment for markets already rattled by artificial-intelligence disruption fears.

After a sharp Monday selloff that dragged down the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite – led by declines in companies like MasterCard and IBM on fears of AI disrupting their respective industries – investors on Tuesday steadied ahead of the demonstration, where the company promised real-time showcases of Claude’s expanding capabilities, new product announcements, and strategic insights from leadership.

Market jitters have intensified in recent days, particularly following the debut of Claude Code Security, a code-scanning tool that fueled concerns about mounting competition for established cybersecurity and software providers.

Against that backdrop, Tuesday’s event is positioned not just as a product update, but as a potentially consequential moment for companies and investors closely watching how rapidly evolving AI tools like Claude could reshape the competitive landscape.

You can watch the event live here: