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In this issue:
🤝 In Partnership: A smart way to keep up with the trends
🤿Deep Dive: Cloudfare’s blamed AI for its first ever mass layoff
🎁Referral Rewards: Earn perks by inviting friends
🤝Supported by: Clear takes on fintech and finance
🤿Deep Dive: Anthropic just made Claude a full Microsoft 365 Coworker
⚒Tool Snapshots: Tools for AI, no-code, and productivity
🖼AI Art: Examples of great and trending AI art
🤝IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MORNING BREW
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🤿 DEEP DIVE
Cloudflare Cuts 20% of Its Workforce Despite Record Revenue Citing AI Productivity Gains
Intelligence: Cloudflare just reported its best quarter ever, $639.8 million in revenue, a 34% year over year jump, and then announced it was cutting 20% of its workforce, around 1,100 people, in the first mass layoff in its 16 year history. CEO Matthew Prince says the two things are directly connected and that AI has made the remaining team so productive that support roles simply are not needed anymore.
Internal AI usage at Cloudflare grew by more than 600% in just the last three months with employees across engineering, HR, finance, and marketing running thousands of AI agent sessions daily.
The entire R&D team now uses Cloudflare's own Workers platform including its vibe coding feature, and 100% of code produced this way is reviewed by autonomous AI agents before deployment.
Prince described seeing employees become two, ten, even 100 times more productive after an internal tipping point last November, comparing the shift to going from a manual to an electric screwdriver.
The cuts span all teams and geographies except salespeople who carry revenue quotas, signaling that revenue generating roles are the ones considered safe for now.
Despite the layoffs Prince says Cloudflare will keep hiring and expects to have more employees in 2027 than at any point in 2026, framing this as a structural reset rather than a retreat.
The company still posted a net loss of $62 million this quarter, slightly wider than last year, even as revenue surged.
🎁REFERRAL REWARDS
If TIW has been useful, invite one friend or coworker who’d actually use AI/automation at work.
1 referral → get the TIW No-Code Workflows PDF (25 plug-and-play workflows)
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🤝 SUPPORTED BY FINTECH TAKES
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🤿 DEEP DIVE
Claude Is Now Generally Available Inside Microsoft 365 with One Conversation That Carries Across Every App
Intelligence: Claude is now built into Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, and the key difference from other AI integrations is that context carries across all four. Start with an email in Outlook, open the brief in Word, build the model in Excel, and finish the deck in PowerPoint without losing the thread of what came before.
In PowerPoint it drafts slides inside existing templates, edits selected content, and generates native charts and diagrams without reformatting everything
In Word it works with tracked changes so every edit is reviewable, responds to comment threads, and applies company specific heading styles and numbering throughout.
· In Excel Claude can build models from scratch, update assumptions without breaking existing formulas, and answer questions about specific cells.
In Outlook it triages an inbox in one prompt, drafts replies that wait for approval before sending, and finds open time across calendars.
Nothing goes out or gets saved automatically, every change in Word is tracked, every cell edit in Excel is highlighted, and every Outlook draft waits for a green light.
Workflows that work well can be saved as Skills so the whole team can reuse the same process consistently across all four apps.
Deployable through Microsoft Foundry, Amazon Bedrock, or Google Cloud Vertex AI with enterprise security and existing compliance frameworks supported.
⚒ TOOL SNAPSHOTS
Futuristic tools within AI, no-code, and productivity
📈 P9 AI Fluency Index - Quickly gauge and upgrade your AI skills.
🎙️ Pop - Transforming voice notes into editable, efficient messaging gems.
📅 nocal 4 - Transform your calendar into a dynamic project workspace.
🌐 Codex in Chrome - Effortless coding for efficient website navigation and task completion.
🖼 AI ART
Examples of great and trending AI art
Images by Independent_Hero
https://www.reddit.com/r/aiArt/comments/1t8zxgl/i_told_chatgpt_to_convert_my_sketches_to_reality/
ℹ️ ABOUT US
The Intelligent Worker helps you to be more productive at work with AI, automation, no-code, and other technologies.
We like real, practical, and tangible use-cases and hate hand-wavy, theoretical, and abstract concepts that don’t drive real-world outcomes.
Our mission is to empower individuals, boost their productivity, and future-proof their careers.
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