Claude Labs: Anthropic's AI Product Incubator Launches

Anthropic is rolling the dice on speed. Its new Claude Labs, an experimental product incubator staffed by veterans from Instagram alongside internal product and engineering leaders, is designed to do one thing: move fast. The goal?

Rapidly prototype, test with users, and scale features like Claude Code, MCP, Skills, and Cowork before competitors can catch their breath. Meanwhile, the revamped Slackbot has gone GA for Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, quietly embedding generative AI into the enterprise messaging flow: draft messages, schedule meetings, search Google Drive, even query Teams. Some of these features, free draft generation, thread summaries, are trickling down to all users.

Others, like query-based Overviews, a Grammarly-style Proofread tool, and an AI Inbox that prioritizes important messages, require a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription, launching first in English in the US. And as if that weren’t enough, AI is stepping into the physical world, companion robots and pets are no longer science fiction. The landscape is shifting fast.

Anthropic just lit a fuse.