Excel: The Russian Tsar of BI Tools

What do Excel and old Russian Tsars (e.g., Alexander II and Nicholas II) have in common? All faced multiple attempts to kill them off. Yet, all survived. In the case of Excel, which has been around for 40 years, industry pundits have been predicting its imminent demise for at least the last two decades. And now, thanks to agentic AI, its life as a critical business intelligence tool is likely to be extended for many more years.

Why Excel Persists and How Agentic AI Will Prolong Its Use

Over the years, each new wave of business intelligence innovation, including dashboards, self-service analytics platforms, and more, has been heralded as the long-overdue replacement for Excel. And yet, Excel stubbornly refused to die. If anything, it continues to thrive.

Why? Excel is the language for business logic. That is why it has remained entrenched in the corporate world.

Finance teams use it to model scenarios. Operations teams use it to reconcile and validate data. Analysts use it as a sandbox to explore hypotheses before formalizing them elsewhere. Executives use it to sanity-check numbers before making decisions. Excel persists because it sits at the intersection of data, reasoning, and human judgment. Agentic AI can reinforce all of these things.

Agentic AI is exceptionally good at performing multi-step analytical tasks: cleaning data, identifying patterns, generating summaries, and even proposing conclusions. Increasingly, AI agents operate within Excel or alongside it, automating the tedious parts while preserving human oversight.

Additionally, AI agents embedded in spreadsheet environments can translate natural language intent into actions, generating formulas, restructuring data, building charts, or explaining results. Essentially, users describe what they want, and the agent handles how it is achieved.

As organizations adopt increasingly automated analytics pipelines, Excel is quietly evolving into a control plane rather than a computation engine. Heavy processing may occur elsewhere, but Excel remains the place where results are reviewed, adjusted, annotated, and shared.

See also: The Rise of Autonomous BI: How AI Agents Are Transforming Data Discovery and Analysis

Agentic AI’s Role in Excel

Agentic AI is exceptionally good at performing multi-step analytical tasks such as cleaning data, identifying patterns, generating summaries, and even proposing conclusions.

Rather than removing Excel from the workflow, AI agents increasingly operate within it or alongside it, automating the tedious parts while preserving human oversight.

One of the most significant shifts enabled by AI agents is the decoupling of analytical intent from spreadsheet mechanics. Historically, Excel power users distinguished themselves by their mastery of formulas, pivot tables, and macros. That expertise remains valuable, but it is no longer a prerequisite for extracting value.

AI agents embedded in spreadsheet environments can translate natural language intent into actions, generating formulas, restructuring data, building charts, or explaining results. Users describe what they want; the agent handles how it is achieved.

Read more about Excel and Agentic AI

Claude Enters the Fray

Last week, Anthropic introduced its Claude in Excel feature to Pro plan subscribers, making its advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools more accessible for spreadsheet-heavy workflows. The add-in supports drag-and-drop of multiple files, prevents overwriting existing cells, and offers additional features.

The solution embeds the Claude AI assistant directly into Microsoft Excel. It can be used to ingest real-time data from various influential financial information providers. In making the announcement, the company touted several features and capabilities.

The solution also allows users to navigate complex models quickly. Users can ask Claude about specific formulas, entire worksheets, or calculation flows across tabs. Claude provides explanations that include cell-level citations, so the logic can be easily verified.

Claude can be used to build models or fill existing templates. Specifically, it can create draft financial models from scratch based on a user’s requirements. Or it can populate existing templates with fresh data while maintaining all formulas and structure.

Other uses include debugging and fixing errors, as well as testing different scenarios without breaking formulas.

The offering is akin to Microsoft Copilot in Excel, which uses AI to help users analyze data, create formulas, generate visuals, and automate tasks. Additionally, companies are using Microsoft Copilot for Excel to make it easier for users to import data into their spreadsheets and identify insights.

A Final Word

Predictions of Excel’s demise have fallen short despite two decades of predictions of its end. Over that time, Excel has continuously adapted, absorbing new capabilities and redefining its role. Agentic AI is simply the latest example of this pattern.

Far from accelerating Excel’s extinction, AI agents are extending Excel’s lifespan by making it more accessible and more powerful.