Anthropic Expands Claude’s Capabilities with Integrations and Deep Research Tools

Anthropic is giving its AI assistant Claude a major upgrade with two new features: Integrations and Advanced Research. These tools, now available in beta for Claude Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers — and soon for Claude Pro users — aim to deepen Claude’s contextual understanding and elevate its research skills.

The move positions Claude more competitively against rivals like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, both of which have recently launched or expanded their own AI research tools.

Integrations: Claude Meets Your Apps

The new Integrations feature is built on Anthropic’s Multi-Channel Processing (MCP) protocol, which allows Claude to pull real-time data from apps, content systems, and development environments. It enables developers to build and host app servers that Claude can connect with, unlocking deeper context and actionable insights.

“When you connect your tools to Claude, it gains deep context about your work — understanding project histories, task statuses, and organizational knowledge,” Anthropic explained in its blog post.

Launch partners include Atlassian, Zapier, Cloudflare, Intercom, Square, and PayPal. These integrations let Claude do things like summarize and generate Confluence pages or initiate Zapier workflows — taking it beyond passive interaction and into proactive work management.

Advanced Research: Deep Dives, Not Just Summaries

The Advanced Research capability marks a significant leap for Claude’s knowledge-gathering potential. By searching across hundreds of internal and external sources — including MCP-connected local drives on desktop — Claude can now produce comprehensive reports in as little as five minutes and as long as 45 minutes.

The system breaks down a user’s request into smaller parts, explores each thoroughly, and compiles a unified report, complete with source citations. Users activate this mode by toggling on the Research button within Claude.

Compared to its earlier version, which delivered quicker but shallower results, the new Advanced Research tool is slower but much more robust — and it’s powered by reasoning models designed for complex, multi-step analysis.

Raising the Stakes in AI Research

Anthropic’s upgrades come amid a broader push in the AI industry toward “reasoning” tools that not only retrieve information but also fact-check and think critically. Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok have all entered the race, emphasizing AI’s ability to produce reliable, research-grade content.

Claude was previously known for speed rather than depth. Now, with Advanced Research and Integrations working together, it’s taking a more serious shot at long-form analysis and enterprise productivity.

Anthropic also increased the usage limits for Claude Code, its AI coding assistant, for Max-tier customers — a sign of the company’s broader goal to become an all-in-one AI utility hub.

While Anthropic’s revenue hit an annualized rate of $1.4 billion in early March, it has set an ambitious target of $34.5 billion by 2027. Whether its new features will be enough to close that gap remains to be seen, but the company is clearly making a more aggressive push into both workplace integration and AI research.