Meta Delays Avocado AI Model as Microsoft and NVIDIA Reshape Enterprise AI

Microsoft unveiled Copilot Cowork as the headline feature of its Wave 3 update for Microsoft 365, introducing an AI assistant that goes beyond answering prompts to autonomously executing multi-step work tasks. Built in close collaboration with Anthropic, Cowork uses Claude's reasoning capabilities to plan and carry out complex workflows across Outlook, Teams, Excel, and the broader Microsoft 365 suite. Users describe a desired outcome, and Cowork breaks it down into an actionable plan that runs in the background with built-in checkpoints for human review.

The feature is powered by what Microsoft calls Work IQ, a system that draws on signals across a user's emails, meetings, messages, and files to ground its actions in relevant business context. Cowork operates within Microsoft 365's existing security and governance boundaries, meaning enterprise identity, permissions, and compliance policies apply by default. It is currently available to a limited set of customers in Research Preview, with broader access expected through the Frontier program in late March.

The partnership marks a notable strategic shift for Microsoft, which has long been associated primarily with OpenAI. The decision to build Cowork on Claude's technology signals that the company is diversifying its AI partnerships for enterprise use. For Anthropic, the integration represents a major distribution win, embedding Claude at the heart of the world's most widely used productivity suite.

Atlassian announced that it will lay off approximately 1,600 employees, roughly 10% of its global workforce, as the company redirects resources toward artificial intelligence and enterprise sales. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes framed the decision as a way to self-fund the company's AI transformation rather than relying on external capital. The restructuring is expected to cost between $225 million and $236 million, with affected employees receiving at least 16 weeks of severance pay along with continued health coverage and pro-rata bonuses.

The layoffs disproportionately affect engineering teams, with over 900 of the eliminated roles coming from software research and development. Geographically, North America bears the largest share at around 40% of the cuts, followed by Australia at approximately 30% and India at 16%. The scale and concentration in engineering suggest a fundamental reorganization of how Atlassian builds products, with AI expected to take over tasks previously handled by human developers.

Atlassian's move follows a growing trend among enterprise technology companies citing AI as justification for major workforce reductions. Earlier in March, fintech platform Block cut approximately 4,000 jobs as CEO Jack Dorsey declared a shift to an intelligence-native operating model. The pattern has sparked debate about whether these layoffs represent genuine AI-driven efficiency gains or serve as convenient cover for cost-cutting, with labor advocates and analysts calling for greater scrutiny.

NVIDIA is preparing to launch NemoClaw, an open-source platform designed to help enterprise software companies build and deploy AI agents that can autonomously perform tasks for their workforces. The platform is expected to be formally unveiled at NVIDIA's annual GTC developer conference running March 15-19 in San Jose, where CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the keynote on March 16. Multiple reports confirmed that NVIDIA has already begun pitching the platform to major enterprise partners.

NemoClaw integrates deeply with NVIDIA's existing NeMo and NIM ecosystems, providing multi-layer security safeguards, built-in privacy controls, and GPU-accelerated infrastructure for running AI agents at scale. Notably, the platform will be accessible to companies regardless of whether their products run on NVIDIA hardware, signaling that the company views the agent platform as a play for ecosystem influence rather than an immediate hardware sales driver.

NVIDIA has been courting major enterprise software companies including Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe, and CrowdStrike as early partners, offering free usage in exchange for open-source contributions. The move positions NVIDIA as a serious contender in the fast-growing AI agent infrastructure market, competing directly with efforts from Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic to define how enterprises build and deploy autonomous AI systems.