A lot has been happening in the month of March 2026 for Claude; this month has had some of the highest profile events since its inception. A big investment in business, new features added to Claude, and Claude’s legal dispute with the US government have all happened at this time. These developments come as Anthropic continues its own research into how AI is reshaping the labour market– balancing rapid enterprise growth with growing regulatory pressure. This article will provide an overview of the major events we have seen from Claude this month.
What is the Claude Partner Network and why does it matter?
On March 12, the Claude Partner Network was announced by Anthropic. The network serves as a platform for helping large companies to adopt Claude. Anthropic pledged an investment of at least $100 million into this initiative to support the network until 2026.
Some of the benefits included in the network are:
- Partner Portal: This will give members access to training courses, sales playbooks, and Anthropic Academy’s co-marketing resources.
- Claude Certified Architect, Foundations: The first certification for solution architects who wish to certify themselves as “Claude Certified Architect” has been released.
- Code Modernization Starter Kit: A ready-made set of tools that businesses can use to modernize legacy codebases with Claude’s Agentic capabilities.
- 5x Scaled Dedicated Support Teams: More Applied AI engineers and technical architects assigned to live partner deals than ever before.
Membership is free and companies like Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, and Infosys have already joined.
What new features did Claude get in March 2026?
This month’s updates as per Anthropic’s Release Notes are intended to facilitate the completion of daily tasks using Claude.
The introduction of inline visualizations (March 12): Claude can now create visuals such as charts and diagrams inside of its responses rather than requiring an external application.
Updates to Excel and PowerPoint add-ins (March 11): Now Claude will provide complete context between these two office applications as well as support an LLM gateway connection for enterprise solutions. These features are part of a broader trend where jobs are at most risk from AI because of the automation of complex workflows.
Memory from previous chat history: All users have access to memory from previously used chats so that Claude can provide you with responses that are increasingly relevant over time.
Free vs. paid plans: what does the March usage promotion offer?
Happy Hour: March 15-27
Anthropic has doubled usage limits for all plans from March 15 to March 27 for those on the Free, Pro, Max and Team Plans during non-peak hours. For weekends, the doubled limits were in effect all day. The additional usage will not count toward weekly caps (they’re truly extra usage), but enterprise plans are excluded.
There is no action you need to take, it is happening automatically as part of the promotion.
The timing coincides with the spike in new signups due to the government controversy and Claude has moved to the top of the free App Store chart, passing ChatGPT for the first time ever.
What happened between Anthropic and the U.S. government?
The most noteworthy story of this month has been the following events:
- March 9th, 10th: The White House is drafting an executive order to remove Claude from all Federal Agencies. This is due to increased tensions with the Trump administration regarding AI Safety conditions being put into practice.
- Mid-March: The Pentagon has declared Anthropic to be a supply chain risk following a breakdown of talks. Anthropic requested assurances that Claude would not be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous systems. However, the Pentagon would not provide anything limiting their ability to access or use it freely.
- Following days: Several Federal Agencies, including Treasury, State, and HHS, began to phase out use of Claude. The Pentagon has a 6 month timeframe to finalize their transition away from Claude.
- Response from Anthropic: Anthropic has filed two Federal lawsuits. Stating that the Pentagon’s actions were in retaliation for the company taking a stance for principled reasons regarding AI Safety and its guidelines.
- Supply Chain Risk: Anthropic is the only American company to publicly receive the “national security supply chain risk” designation. Which a label that is historically reserved for foreign adversaries.
Additionally, Anthropic has accused the Chinese AI labs of generating 24000 fraudulent accounts. For the purposes of misusing Claude for Model Distillation, which adds another layer of National Security concern for Anthropic.
Key Takeaways
March of 2026 was by far the largest month yet for Claude.
The $100 million investment into the Claude Partner Network illustrates Anthropic’s commitment to pushing for enterprise adoption.
The addition of inline visualizations and cross-application memory will also significantly enhance Claude as an everyday useable application.
The usage promotion has added users at record levels during March of 2026. While there are issues surrounding government dispute that can be serious, even that caused more people to use Claude.
