Anthropic and Claude
Anthropic is an American artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco that develops the Claude family of large language models. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, the company operates as a public benefit corporation with a mission focused on AI safety[^c1]. Anthropic uses a training methodology called Constitutional AI, which instills ethical guidelines directly into its models through a written set of principles[^c2]. By May 2026, the company had reached a primary market valuation exceeding $900 billion[^c13], with annualized revenue surpassing $44 billion after experiencing 80-fold year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2026[^c12][^c13].
The Claude model family, named after the mathematician Claude Shannon, has gone through multiple major versions from Claude 1 in 2023 to Claude Opus 4.7 in 2026, consistently ranking among the leading AI models in coding, reasoning, and agentic capabilities[^c4]. Beyond the core model, Anthropic has developed specialized products including Claude Code, a terminal-based agentic coding tool that generates approximately 4% of all public GitHub commits; Claude Cowork, a desktop agent for knowledge workers with editions for legal, enterprise, and small business users; and managed agent capabilities such as Dreaming, Outcomes, and Multiagent Orchestration[^c5]. The company also introduced the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting AI applications to external tools and data sources that has been adopted across the industry[^c6]. In cybersecurity, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing and the Claude Mythos Preview model, which identified thousands of previously unknown software vulnerabilities across major operating systems and browsers.
Anthropic has been involved in several significant disputes that tested the boundaries of AI safety commitments. The company refused to remove contractual restrictions against using its models for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, leading to a legal confrontation with the U.S. Department of Defense[^c7]. It also faced legal challenges over training data, including a class-action lawsuit over the destructive scanning of millions of physical books[^c8] and a settlement regarding the use of pirated materials[^c9]. Through these events, Anthropic became a central actor in the debate over how private AI companies balance safety principles with commercial and governmental demands.