The Xero Ltd (ASX: XRO) share price is higher after the company announced a partnership with AI business Anthropic.
Xero is one of the world’s leading cloud accounting businesses, while Anthropic is a leading AI business which provides Claude.
Xero to work with Anthropic
The company said that it had signed a multi-year deal to bring Claude into Xero and Xero’s financial data into Claude.ai for real-time financial intelligence.
Xero said this will give small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors real-time financial intelligence and ability to act on it, wherever they choose to work.
This will be the first time Xero customers will be able to work with their financial data directly inside a major AI platform.
Xero said that customers will be able to orchestrate financial tasks from start to finish across accounting, payroll and payments.
The ASX tech share also said that JAX (the Just Ask Xero tool) will “proactively do the heavy lifting analysing revenue and profit performance, tracking real-time cash flow, and identifying unpaid invoices to suggest actions for small business owners and their advisors to take.”
Customers will be able to safely use their Xero financial data and insights in Claude for detailed analysis and business planning.
Over time, Claude will also suggest and complete end-to-end actions that customers can do with a single click.
Xero said that financial data shared between the platforms is used solely for the user’s specific session and proprietary business data is never used to train Claude’s AI models.
This will be available in the coming months. Additionally, Xero’s engineering teams will use Claude and Cowork to accelerate their own product development.
Management comments
The Xero Chief Product & Technology Officer Diya Jolly said:
To run their business efficiently, small business owners and their accountants and bookkeepers need to be able to answer these questions and act on them in real time whether using Xero or Claude. This partnership delivers on that.
Small businesses and advisors don’t just need data; they need a digital partner that acts on it. Integrating Claude moves Xero into agentic workflows, where Xero’s AI superagent, JAX (Just Ask Xero), does the heavy lifting, from predicting cash flow gaps to executing complex financial tasks. Crucially, this trusted intelligence isn’t locked into one platform; it follows the user securely wherever they choose to work, empowering advisor collaboration. By shifting the admin burden to a team of agents orchestrated by JAX, we’re giving our customers time back and providing them with clarity so they can make informed decisions and focus on the future.
The Anthropic Managing Director of ‘International’ Chris Ciauri said:
Xero has spent 20 years building the financial platform that millions of small businesses depend on. Claude brings a reasoning layer to that foundation. Now, instead of spending hours trying to make sense of their financials on top of everything else it takes to run a business, customers get clear answers and recommended actions in real time. This provides small businesses and their advisors with the kind of financial intelligence that used to require a dedicated analyst or CFO.
Final thoughts on the Xero share price
It’s an interesting development by Xero, to directly go to an AI and implement it into its systems. I wonder how the dedicated business analysts, CFOs, accountants and advisors will feel about this move.
I think Xero is a great business, has strong financials and has an exciting future because of how businesses are increasingly using digital tools. If this means greater profits and stronger client retention, then it should be a net positive for Xero. I still think it’s one of the ASX growth shares to watch, but this is an interesting move for the business.
