Will Anthropic's Cowork AI Really Trigger a ‘SaaSpocalypse’? Not So Fast

Experts say skilled professionals still have time to adapt to technology rather than be replaced by it.

Cowork gives Claude controlled access to specific folders on a user’s computer, allowing it to read, edit, create, and organise files.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

As Anthropic quietly signalled a shift in the power dynamics of workplace AI, global markets spiralled into a turmoil. Investors panicked over the potential disruption to long-reliable Software as a Service (SaaS) model, which has powered much of the tech boom. They feared that advanced AI can now combine, replicate, or completely replace features previously requiring multiple paid subscriptions.

For the uninitiated, the US-based AI safety and research company recently announced that its Claude AI's Cowork mode now supports plugins, a technical update that lets users "bundle any skills, connectors, slash commands, and sub-agents together to turn Claude into a specialist for your role, team, and company."

In a blog post on 30 January, Anthropic launched 11 such plugins spanning sales, finance, legal, data, marketing, and customer support as production-ready tools designed to embed Claude deep inside organisational workflows.

The release of these plugins wiped out an estimated $830 billion to nearly $1 trillion in value from software and services stocks worldwide. In India, IT stocks suffered their worst single-day selloff since the March 2020 COVID-19 crash. The software services sector lost around Rs 1.9 lakh crore in market capitalisation as investors rushed to exit, worried that the new AI tool could make conventional IT outsourcing and software services "obsolete".

However, amid talks of the looming 'SaaSpocalypse', experts argue SaaS is unlikely to collapse overnight and will instead change gradually—giving companies and professionals time to adapt and grow with the technology.

Claude as a 'Trained Employee'

For a company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei, many read Anthropic's recent product update as a declaration that Claude is being prepared for the office.

Built on the same foundation as Claude Code, Cowork handles complex, non-coding workflows such as drafting reports, organising documents, or creating spreadsheets. You could think of it like a trained employee that delivers “finished, professional work.”

Plugins extend this by defining how tasks are executed—what tools and data Claude can access, how sensitive workflows are handled, and which commands are permitted.

In other words, Cowork gives Claude controlled access to specific folders on a user’s computer, allowing it to read, edit, create, and organise files. Once assigned a task, Claude plans and executes it autonomously, updating the user along the way.

Experts tell The Quint that true enterprise transformation demands far more than capable AI agents alone: it hinges on robust governance, precise domain-specific knowledge, human-in-the-loop oversight, and seamless integration with entrenched legacy systems—elements that remain stubbornly human-dependent and costly to scale at enterprise grade.

In short, they say, this reality points to a more measured outcome rather than abrupt extinction. Adaptable incumbents and skilled professionals still have time—and opportunity—to evolve in tandem with the technology instead of being replaced by it.

Last year, Merriam-Webster crowned "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year, defining it as low-quality, mass-produced digital content generated by AI. By early 2026, the AI slop crisis has escalated from an online nuisance to a serious economic liability. Companies deploying generative tools without proper controls face rising costs from error corrections, lost productivity, and model degradation.

Lasting value requires a human layer—oversight, domain expertise, ethical checks, and rigorous validation—to detect hallucinations, ensure accuracy, align outputs with business goals, and prevent drift. Firms that skip this human-AI symbiosis risk squandering capital and facing competitive decline, they argue.

So, What About Jobs?

Having said that, whether this will translate into a full-blown white-collar bloodbath—or widespread job losses globally and in India—remains unclear. Last May, Amodei had issued a blunt and unsettling warning to the US government and the public.

Amodei said AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially pushing unemployment to 10-20 per cent within the next one to five years. He warned that AI companies and governments must stop “sugar-coating” what lies ahead: the possible large-scale erosion of jobs across technology, finance, law, consulting and other white-collar professions, particularly at the entry level.

Talking to The Quint, Bharat Narayan, Senior Manager, Emerging Technologies at EY Global Delivery Services, conceded that routine coding and basic IT roles are likely to shrink significantly, with junior positions most vulnerable as AI automates 40-60 percent of repetitive work.

Citing recent EY projections, he said generative AI could transform nearly 38 million jobs in India by 2030, lifting productivity in organised sectors by over 2.6 percent, while reshaping workflows rather than triggering mass unemployment.

However, he argued, that even as the traditional “grunt work” pyramid is collapsing, it is being replaced by augmented roles where human judgement, empathy, and strategic oversight command premium value. New opportunities are emerging in a growing “human layer” across sectors that were previously slow to digitise, he said.

In real estate and hospitality, he pointed to demand for “experience architects” who curate personalised, high-value services beyond AI’s reach. Similarly, in legal services, “legal navigators” are gaining relevance by offering trust-based strategic advice alongside low-cost AI research.

“This is not job destruction but evolution—from automation to intelligent augmentation,” he said, advising entry-level coders to upskill in AI tools.

Interestingly, Foundit Insights Tracker's report reveals that India's AI sector emerged as the dominant driver of job creation in 2025. The country recorded 2.9 lakh active AI-linked job postings, reflecting measured, structurally robust growth as enterprises shifted from experimental pilots to scaled, production-ready deployments.

Overall white-collar hiring rose 15 percent year-on-year, with a 5 percent month-on-month acceleration in December, marking a transition from post-pandemic caution to sustained expansion.

• IT-Software and Services led with 37 percent of AI roles (32 percent year-on-year growth), followed by Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance at 15.8 percent—the fastest-growing sector at 41 percent—fueled by fraud detection, risk modeling, and customer analytics

• Manufacturing trailed at 6 percent with 34 percent growth

• Large enterprises and MNCs captured 49 percent of openings (~1.42 lakh roles), prioritising GenAI integration, machine learning operations, and enterprise-grade AI engineering

• Bengaluru dominated with 26 percent of postings, ahead of Delhi NCR (18 percent) and Hyderabad (12 percent)

The report describes 2025 as a phase of "expansion and discipline," focusing on use-case-driven maturity rather than indiscriminate scaling.

In 2026, the report adds, AI hiring is projected to surge 32 percent to nearly 3.82 lakh roles, propelled by generative AI, enterprise automation, large-scale digital transformation, and rising demand for machine learning operations and LLM skills.

GenAI/LLM expertise alone is expected to jump 58 percent. And machine learning will hold a strong 34 percent share of demand.

"The question of full AI replacement has a clear, nuanced answer," Vinay Gahlot, CEO of VaultStack AI, told The Quint, reflect a growing industry consensus.

"No—at the critical layers of infrastructure, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and institutional knowledge. These demand deep contextual understanding, regulatory compliance, legacy integration, and irreplaceable human judgement. Yes, however, at the lower-end layers—routine testing, documentation generation, and basic maintenance tasks. These repetitive, rule-based activities are increasingly automated by AI tools that deliver greater speed and consistency."

Yet, Future of Work is Unpredictable

As India’s top IT firms undergo deeper structural shifts, making a decisive move away from headcount-led expansion towards efficiency, automation, and productivity-driven growth, the future of work is no longer predictable.

Nikhil N, a Bengaluru-based technology marketer, told The Quint:

“While some specialised, high-end roles are emerging, the rapid spread of LLM tools across professions—including software engineering—has made career outcomes increasingly uncertain. With access now nearly universal, the real differentiator is the willingness to master these tools."

He added that software engineering roles across all levels are under mounting pressure, as role compression moves from theory to reality. “Future-proofing has never been harder,” he said, adding that workers are now competing with an intelligence that evolves faster than human learning cycles, undermining traditional approaches to upskilling.

IT unions had warned in 2025 that India's 3.67 million-strong IT workforce, which helped build the country into a global software and outsourcing hub, is facing an existential threat from AI—with up to 5 lakh jobs potentially at risk over the next three years.

Alagamuni Welkin, general secretary at Union of IT and ITES Employees (UNITE), told The Quint they are seeing a clear trend of age-based discrimination in the industry.

Senior employees—those in their mid-30s and 45-plus—are increasingly being pushed out. Companies are aggressively recruiting larger numbers of freshers, under the belief that younger workers, armed with emerging AI tools, will deliver better results at lower cost.

“The reality is that people in this industry have always adapted to new technologies. Yet, companies often view senior staff purely through a cost lens: one experienced employee might cost as much as four juniors, even if the juniors appear more ‘productive’ when augmented by AI. Layoffs have become systemic—happening every few months, though only a fraction are announced publicly. On average, for every 25 people who leave, roughly 25 fresh faces come in. Company profits keep rising, and overall employment opportunities in the sector remain high,” Welkin said.

The unionist added that the companies frame these layoffs as ‘restructuring,’ but the human cost—to families and livelihoods—is rarely acknowledged.

“Every month, 10 to 15 affected employees approach us with grievances. Interestingly, it is legally risky for employers to explicitly cite ‘adoption of AI’ or ‘technological replacement’ as the reason for termination. Instead, what we commonly see is that companies force seniors to resign by citing fabricated grounds such as underperformance, failure to meet targets, or other vague non-performance issues."

Alagamuni Welkin

An Impending 'SaaSpocalypse' for India's IT Industry?

Tony Thomas, Advisor at Sweden-based global investment firm EQT and former Group CIO of Nissan Motor Corporation, told The Quint that the so-called “SaaSpocalypse” is already reshaping India’s IT industry.

According to Thomas, for decades, Indian IT grew on a simple equation: more engineers meant more billing and more growth. AI breaks that link.

He warned that routine services, including application maintenance, testing, and BPO—long considered India’s strengths—are most vulnerable to automation.

Thomas noted that value is increasingly moving away from volume-driven coding toward business problem-solving, with demand rising for professionals who combine deep engineering skills with domain expertise.

“The SaaSpocalypse is not about software disappearing; it is about the manual layer being automated,” he said, describing it as an identity shift for Indian IT—from manpower to mindpower, and from service provider to orchestrator of intelligence.

According to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, a trust under the Indian Ministry of Commerce, India’s technology industry is on track to double its revenue to Rs 43.1 lakh crore (US$500 billion) by 2030.

Meanwhile, Dr Shailendra Yadav, Founder-Director of Deep Research Info Tech, said, “The Indian IT sector is undergoing a structural reset as global enterprises rein in SaaS spending and demand clearer returns."

“Long-term sustainability hinges on workforce upskilling, proprietary IP, deeper domain expertise, and opportunities in SaaS rationalisation, FinOps, and indigenous products. The sector must evolve from execution partners to strategic advisors."

Dr Shailendra Yadav

The Union Budget 2026–27 has sharpened its focus on digital infrastructure, positioning data centres—particularly those enabling AI—as a core policy priority.

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said data centres are a critical layer of the AI ecosystem, noting that $70 billion in investments are already underway, with another $90 billion announced, reflecting strong global interest in India.

To draw long-term foreign investment, the Budget proposed a tax holiday until 2047 for overseas cloud service providers using India-based data centres to serve global clients. Such firms will serve Indian customers through local reseller entities, while a 15 percent safe-harbour margin on costs has been proposed where the Indian data centre operator is a related entity.

Vaishnaw said the policy framework extending to 2047 positions India as a major global hub for AI and cloud infrastructure.

Shrenik Kuwad of Sigmoid, an enterprise AI consulting and business transformation firm, emphasised that despite short-term challenges such as stock volatility, workforce disruption, and delivery-model upheaval, India's structural advantages position it for substantial long-term gains.

"India's vast AI engineering talent pool, expanding global capability centers (GCCs), robust cloud infrastructure investments, and cost-effective deployment models provide a clear edge. AI reduces the importance of physical proximity while amplifying the value of engineering scale—India's greatest strength."

Shrenik Kuwad

He described the so-called "SaaSpocalypse"—fears that AI agents and platforms will cannibalise traditional SaaS and services models—as both a threat and an opportunity. "Handled strategically, it could catapult Indian IT from mere services vendors to AI-native platform integrators, industry intelligence powerhouses, and builders of autonomous enterprise systems," Kuwad noted.

"The winners will own the intelligence layer, not just execute on it."

(Rejimon Kuttappan is an independent journalist from Kerala. He is a workers’ rights researcher, forced labour investigator, and author of 'Undocumented'. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses, nor is responsible for the same.)