Anthropic shifts Cowork VMs to the cloud to reduce local battery and performance costs

The previous version ran model inference in the cloud while executing tool calls inside an Anthropic-provided VM downloaded to user computers. Rieseberg explained that users experienced high disk, battery, and performance costs with local VMs, and sessions halted whenever users closed their laptops.

The updated version runs both model inference and the VM in the cloud, assigning each session its own isolated sandbox. When the cloud VM requires access to local user files, the Cowork desktop app handles the tool call to fetch the data. Rieseberg noted that the shift also enables using Cowork from mobile phones and lets long-running tasks continue uninterrupted.