When Anthropic introduced “Cowork” — a new way for users to collaborate with its AI assistant Claude — it probably wasn’t thinking about shared offices, flexible workspace operators, or the coworking industry’s long fight for a stable identity.
But names matter, and for an industry that has already lived through one major identity erosion, Anthropic’s choice of the term “Cowork” raises a familiar and uncomfortable question: what happens when big tech starts to colonize the language of work?
Anthropic’s Cowork is not a physical place. It’s actually a workflow mode — an AI agent with greater autonomy, access to files, and the ability to “work alongside” a human. The company frames the experience as leaving tasks for a coworker, not chatting with a tool.
Just as Microsoft’s Copilot reframed AI as a workplace assistant embedded in daily tools, Cowork reframes collaboration itself. The word suggests partnership, presence, and shared effort. Linguistically, it lands squarely in the same semantic territory as coworking — even if it serves an entirely different function.
And that’s where the tension begins.
A Familiar Pattern: When Industries Lose Their Words
The flexible workspace sector has been here before.
In the early days, the industry rallied around the term “executive suites.” Then sports arenas adopted it. Then HR teams. Then commercial real estate marketers. Eventually, the term became so diluted that it lost its ability to signal a distinct category in search, media, or customer understanding.
“Serviced offices” followed a similar path — clear in meaning, but cold, transactional, and eventually overtaken by something more cultural.
Coworking succeeded where others failed because it described not just space, but behavior. Community. Flexibility. A way of working.
But that success also made the term vulnerable.
What Happens If “Cowork” Becomes a Tech Product?
If Anthropic trademarks “Cowork” in a meaningful way — or simply dominates its usage through scale — the implications ripple beyond branding.
Search and SEO are the first fault lines
As AI products, reviews, tutorials, and documentation flood the web, search engines (already being overtaken by AI search tools) will increasingly associate “cowork” with software and AI, not space. Over time, that could weaken the discoverability of coworking operators — especially smaller ones that already struggle to compete with platforms and aggregators.
Conceptual confusion follows visibility loss
For younger workers and founders entering the workforce through AI-first tools, “cowork” may begin to mean working with AI, not working alongside other people in shared environments.
The linguistic center of gravity shifts. And when language shifts, markets follow.
How Operators Are Already Hedging Their Bets
Interestingly, the industry’s largest players seem to sense this fragility.
IWG rarely leads with “coworking.” It talks about flexible workspace and hybrid working, mostly. Industrious emphasizes premium offices and hospitality-led workplaces. WeWork now leans heavily into flexibility, enterprise solutions, and workplace platforms.
These companies are already distancing themselves from a single overloaded term — not because of AI yet, but perhaps because they’ve learned how quickly language can be taken over.
Does This Force a Naming Reset?
Not immediately, but it does add pressure.
If tech companies continue to redefine core workplace terms — cowork, office, assistant, collaboration — the physical workplace industry may once again be forced to clarify itself with broader or more precise language.
Flexible workspace and flexspace are contenders. Serviced offices may even return, rebranded and modernized.
Or the industry may splinter linguistically: coworking as culture, flex workspace as product.
None of these outcomes are inherently bad, but all of them introduce friction.
The Real Risk Is Narrative Control
Anthropic may never meaningfully enforce a trademark against coworking operators. That’s not the real issue.
The real risk is who controls the story of work.
When technology companies define what it means to “cowork,” they shape expectations about productivity, collaboration, and presence. Physical workplaces then become the supporting actor, not the setting.
For an industry built on human proximity, that’s a subtle but significant shift.
A Moment to Be Intentional
Coworking named a philosophy of work. If that word starts to drift, the industry will need to decide whether to fight for it, adapt around it, or deliberately evolve beyond it.
Anthropic’s Cowork may be just a product, but it’s also a signal: the language of work is up for grabs again.
And this time, the competition isn’t just other real estate sectors, but rather, AI itself.
