The Coworking Imp: A Sector’s Unease

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The markets, you see, are a bit like a flock of startled pigeons. Easily spooked, prone to frantic flapping, and occasionally leaving…deposits…on the unsuspecting below. For a while now, they’ve been cooing contentedly over the promise of Artificial Intelligence, a field that’s less about intelligence and more about convincing machines to mimic it convincingly enough to get funding. Then came Claude Cowork, and the cooing turned to a rather agitated squawking. Investors, it appears, are starting to wonder if they’ve backed the wrong magical familiar.

Every boom, and every subsequent wobble, requires a catalyst. AI has had its share of these, rising and falling like a badly-inflated dragon. The emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot that claimed to rival the Western offerings while supposedly running on a budget that would barely cover a decent tea service for the development team, caused a similar flutter.1 The markets, of course, are never entirely sure what to make of such claims. They tend to assume the worst, then briefly celebrate when the worst doesn’t immediately happen.

Now, the arrival of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, an ‘agentic’ AI tool – a phrase that sounds suspiciously like something out of a pulp science magazine – has prompted a rather vigorous round of share-shifting in the software sector. It’s a bit like watching a game of magical chairs, only instead of chairs, it’s company valuations, and instead of music, it’s the relentless drumbeat of algorithmic trading. Is this, then, the software industry’s DeepSeek moment? The question is less about a simple comparison and more about whether the pigeons have finally spotted the cat.

What is Claude Cowork, Exactly?

How much of this company’s business could a tool like Claude Cowork – or its future iterations – realistically disrupt? Does the company have a coherent AI strategy that goes beyond mere buzzword compliance? And, crucially, is the valuation justified? AI is a competitor, not a savior. The software companies you invest in should be profitable, demonstrate consistent revenue growth, and trade at reasonable multiples.

After all, in the grand scheme of things, a little bit of skepticism is always a good thing. Especially when dealing with magical imps and the unpredictable whims of the market.

1 The Guild of Alchemists and Venture Capitalists maintains that the cost of dragon scales alone would have exceeded DeepSeek’s reported budget. Their calculations, however, are notoriously unreliable.
2 The Unseen University of Coders argues that user numbers are a vanity metric, akin to counting the number of pigeons perched on a statue.
3 Legal scholars are divided on whether this constitutes a genuine innovation or simply a more efficient way to bury evidence.
4 Palantir, naturally, insists that its involvement is purely altruistic and has nothing to do with gathering data for…other purposes.

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2026-02-09 15:23